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[floppydisc]

Hi,

I was just wondering why MC does not use incremental updates. They would make it much easier for you - the developers - and the users. It would also save a lot of bandwidth.
A simple but reliable approach would be to store all files (gzip compressed) server side together with a list of MD5 checksums. When the client/user selects Update (or an auto update runs) it just compares all checksums and downloads the files that have unequal checksums. That would also have the side effect of being a repair function for a damaged install.
Ever version could have it's own files and MD5 lists - for example MC11_Retail, MC11_Dev. The Retail version only includes the non-beta files and the Dev version includes the most recent (beta/release candidate) files. So on update the user can choose if he wants to try the beta or stay with the retail line.
That is not a true incremental update system but would still save a lot time and bandwidth.

Any thoughts?

[JimH]

We did it years ago, but it was a lot of work to keep up to date.  High speed connections are the future so it's less relevant than it was.

[GHammer]

Pretty popular though.
MS spent lots of time on it recently for their updates.
Likewise firefox.