[haiku-development] Haiku updating system?

So we are on our way to having an alpha, great. We have some plans in
the works for a package system for installing and updating
applications, which is good.

But what about updating Haiku itself? Obviously we could copy the
standard "download updates from the internet and prompt for install"
system used just about everywhere else (Windows, Mac OS X, various
Linux distros.) Or we could think of something different (not sure
what though.) Other considerations are how Firefox and Chrome do
updates. Firefox does it in the background and prompts to update (not
too different to the standard OS updating) where Chrome does it
completely silently and in the background (which might be
disconcerting to some people.)

I have also had thoughts of using the binary diffing code from bsdiff
and bspatch (http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/) to make very small
and efficient binary updates (versus the hundreds of megabytes seen on
Mac OS X and Windows at times.) Though given how small Haiku
applications currently are this may be over the top. But it could
definitely be done with proper backing up and checking summing, etc.
Plus for simplicity each update would go from one version to another
(and so would need to be chained in order if someone was very
out-of-date.)

Also someone else has mentioned Sparkle for application updating,
which is just a Mac OS X technology but could provide good
inspiration. Maybe it could even inspire Haiku's updating.

Anyhow this is not necessarily a consideration for the alpha, but
certainly for R1. It is also another area where Haiku could set itself
apart.

-- 
Regards,
Ryan

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