Since our MiniDisc software is subject to ongoing development, it is highly desirable for the users to always have the latest version installed to be able to benefit from the latest updates in the software.

In order to assure this, many software packages leverage the use of automatic updates. These updates can either be performed externally by a package manager like it is found on most Unix installations or by an update routine integrated into the program code of the software package. Since automatic updates is very popular among many application developers, several ready-to-use software libraries which implement an automatic updater exist and can easily be integrated into the source code of a software package.

The most popular software updaters include

1. Sparke (MacOSX) - http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/
2. WinSparkle (Windows) - http://winsparkle.org/
3. Omaha (Windows) - http://code.google.com/p/omaha/

As mentioned before, Linux and most other Unix derivatives already include a package management system which takes care of periodic updates and thus there is no additional update management within the application necessary. In fact, all popular cross-plattform applications like Firefox or Google Chrome that provide an integrated update mechanism through a menu option, have this option disabled in their Linux versions since the package manager already take care of it. Thus, we will concentrate on integrating automatic updates into the software application on MacOSX and Windows only.

We will be using Sparkle

We will be using WinSparkle