What's the best way to add a self-update feature to a Java Swing application?

Question

I\'m trying to figure out a way to add a self-update feature to a Java/Swing application I\'m working on.

Basically I\'ve got a bunch of jar files with extra functio

Answer 1

Updates, plugins, separation of concern etc. are exactly what OSGi is about - you might want to take a look at this. It won't come free (read: with a steep initial learning curve, especially when you are currently using classloading tricks) at least there are good open source implementations (felix - see felix.apache.org, equinox - see www.eclipse.org and others)

For these implementations autoupdaters are available - if you write your modules correctly it's possible to update at runtime without restarting.