Force catch-all update to run

Hey Paul,

Is there a way, possibly via a command line argument to force an update using the catch-all copy?

No.

In the scenario I have my software is on the latest version but I want to force the update to run using the catch-all version.

What's the purpose of doing this? Under normal circumstances a user can just re-install your app if they screw up one of the files.

Could the version be invalidated by passing -cdata with a path to a .wyc that contains a version number that .wys doesn't know about do it? Or, would that have unwanted side effects?

That wouldn't do what you want.

I'm curious as to why you don't think a clean install is the better solution? Why would the end-user be messing with the files in the first place (to get the installation into such a condition that it needs to download the catch-all).

If you tell me what you're trying to do, maybe I'll be able to help you.

The use case I have is that the program being updated by wyUpdate is an update tool that deploys update packages to a number of servers that are located on-premises at various customers sites. We use wyUpdate to download the packages as part of the update to the update tool. Not all of the packages change between updates to the update tool. The packages are quite large. So, we would like to leverage patches. However, prior to using wyUpdate, users of the update tool downloaded the packages individually. We can send instructions to rely on wyUpdate. But, because a large number of users have been in the habit of downloading packages, we want to be certain that the package is the correct version at them time the update tool deploys it. So, we check. If an incorrect version is found, we would like wyUpdate to download it. The problem with patches is, they dont seem to check files that were not supposed to change between versions. It would be great if wyUpdate would do some sort of checksum or hash on files that did not change in a patch and switch to the catch-all if this condition is found. But, I realize that your current solution solves the needs of 99% of the cases and that you recommend reinstalling in this case. This is very reasonable. However, it does not help us with our particular use case. We are trying to make updating with the update tool as easy and reliable as possible for customers and do not want to ask them to reinstall. We want them to launch the update tool, have it auto update if possible and make it easy for them to deploy the overall system to the servers that need to be updated. Currently, we are only building the catch-all. Im already using a customized version of wyUpdate that allows me to pass cookies used for authentication to the download code. I will probably add a command line option to wyUpdate to force using the catch-all if an incorrect version of an update package is found. Unless, you have a better suggestion.

The problem with patches is, they dont seem to check files that were not supposed to change between versions.

Patches do check if the versions have changed (that is, the "target" version doesn't match what it's supposed to be for the patch to succeed). If the "target version" has been modified, and thus the patch fails to apply & the catch-all update is used.

However, wyUpdate doesn't scan *all* of the files in your app. Just the files that need to be patched. So if your end-user messes around with all of the files, wyUpdate will only revert to the catch-all update in cases

It would be great if wyUpdate would do some sort of checksum or hash on files that did not change in a patch and switch to the catch-all if this condition is found.

We'll think about this.

Thanks!

We were able to enfoce the installation of the catch-all update by modifying the *.wyc file. Just put an empty version in there and the catch-all update will be used by wyUpdate.