This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Janek Schwarz. Original Post: Resources for Automatic Updates of Java Applications Feed Title: The Wannabe Java Rockstar Feed URL: http://weblog.janek.org/Archive/Categories/javablogs.rss.xml Feed Description: The Wannabe Java Rockstar: Janek's weblog where all posts go to Eleven Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Janek Schwarz Latest Posts From The Wannabe Java Rockstar

On my quest for tools that help with automatic updates of Java applications I found a couple of articles, tools and libraries:

Articles

• Update distributed applications - Article at Javaworld comparing three solutions for auto-updating Java applications: Java Web Start, Quest DeployDirector and PowerUpdate.
• Make Applications Update-Aware - Employ Java Web Start to place JAR files on a web server to facilitate error-free update

Solutions

• Java Web Start
• ZeroG PowerUpdate
• InstallShield UpdateService
• Quest DeployDirector
• AutoUpdater
• stableUpdate
• Java Application Update Utility Software
• JRunner

Most of the comments and several emails suggested Java Web Start. I still don't know enough about it. Most of our users don't have Java installed. To take care of that our application comes with it's own JVM.  It is private and not registered with the system. I have no clue how to integrate that with Web Start/JNLP. The FAQ doesn't help.

Anyway, next step: evaluation.