Updating a NetBeans Platform Application

Abstract

During software lifecycles, it nearly always happens that you want to provide updates for your application because of fixed errors, new functionalities, or to implement new requirements. It would be very cumbersome if you needed to redistribute the entire application when you just needed to provide a patch or a new feature. This is one of the advantages of a modular architecture of the application: you can offer updates on the module layer. For the user, installing updates must be as simple and intuitive as possible. To that end, the NetBeans Platform in conjunction with the Plugin Manager provides an Auto Update service. This module is able to automatically search for updated or new modules in a set of predefined update centers, and to dynamically load them at runtime. Beyond that, users are able to manually install downloaded updates or new modules via the Plugin Manager.