Hey Mark,
You could use the "Changes" property of the AutomaticUpdater.
Using changelog in main application
Management has requested that our application includes a changelog so that users can see what has changed since previous versions. We already include that information in wyBuild, so I'd prefer to not have to maintain a separate copy of our changes somewhere else.
Would it be feasible to modify wyBuild such that we could obtain the information contained in the changelog through the AutomaticUpdater control? I assume that the client.wyc file would not have the whole history, and that the application would have to obtain the entire changelog from the server and store it in the wyBuild cache. I think that in my case at least, if I only had the changes for the most recent version until the user checked for an update, that it would be acceptable.
I like the way that you present the "what has changed" information, but I can see where some people might want to only extract the text and use their own control -- so exactly how you present the changes to the consumer would be a potential concern.
If that can't be done due to the way that the changelog is obtained from the server or for any other reason, would there be any other alternatives? wyBuild could accept a formatted file (that I manage) to track all the changes, or perhaps wyBuild could have an "export changes to file" option that I could use to integrate with my application.
I'm open to any other ideas besides what I've proposed, of course.
Sam,
Sorry it took me a couple days to get back here. The use case as I have been instructed, would be to let the user see what has changed over the past several releases, not just in the update that has just occurred.
When I use the Changes property of the AutomaticUpdater, it is blank, presumably because I am observing it when there has been no update.
For instance, in this application, we are on v2.14.6 right now. Only using the AutomaticUpdater control, is there a way for the user to see what has changed since we started using wyUpdate (v2.13.0) through 2.14.6? I'm trying to avoid repeating the changes that I record in wyBuild.
Sorry it took me a couple days to get back here.
No problem.
is there a way for the user to see what has changed since we started using wyUpdate (v2.13.0) through 2.14.6?
Not built into the AutomaticUpdater.
However you can cache the changes yourself. For instance, when the "UpdateSuccessful" event is raised, get the latest changes from the "Changes" property and save this to a file. You can keep adding the changes to the file (add to the top of the file, to follow the conventions wyUpdate lays out).
This way you can keep a record on your users computer of all changes since the user first installed your software.
It won't include the changes since you first added the AutomaticUpdater to your app, but that's not useful information anyway. For instance, if the user installs 2.14.0 and updates once (or through multiple updates) to 2.14.6 the changelog you compile will include all changes from 2.14.0 to 2.14.6.
From a UI perspective the user doesn't really need to know what changes happened before they installed the app.
Does this help?