Best Practices for Self Updating Desktop Application in a network environment

Question

I have searched through google and SO for possible answers to this question, but can only find small bits of information scattered around the place, most of which appear to be p

Answer 1

• Do you force an update if the clients software is out of date, but not going to break when trying to communicate with other version of the software or the database itself? If so how do you signify this breaking change?

Ask the user.

• How often should you check for updates? Weekly/daily/hourly and exactly why?

Ask the user.

• Should the update be visible to the user or run behind the scenes from a UI point of view?

Ask the user.

• Should you even notify the user that there is an update available if it is not a major update? (for instance fixing a single button in a remote part of the application which only one user actually requires)

Ask the user (notice a trend here?).

• Should you try to patch the application or do you re-download the entire application from scratch Macintosh style?

Typically, patch, if the application is of any significant size.

As far as the "ask the user" responses go, it doesn't mean always prompt them every single time. Instead, give them the option to set what they should be prompted for and what should just be done invisibly (and the first time a given thing occurs, ask them what should be done in the future, and remember that). This shouldn't be very difficult and you gain a lot of goodwill from a larger portion of your user base, since it's very hard to have fixed settings suit the desires of everyone who uses your app. When in doubt, more options are better than less - especially when they're the kind of option that's fairly trivial to code.