Free solution for automatic updates with a .NET/C# app?

You can try Autoupdater.NET from GitHub I developed it my self and it works very well in my applications. You just have to add one line in your code and it's done. Also, it is open source so you can modify and use as you want.

Should've updated this ages ago, oops!

But anyway, I've been using SparkleDotNET for a while now and it's been working absolutely wonderfully. There's a few little bugs here and there but I've already helped get some of them squashed, and hopefully I'll be able to get rid of the others too :)

For those who have the time to run the publish functionality of Visual Studio, and whose app is relatively self-contained, and doesn't require anything like launching on startup, I'd recommend ClickOnce for sure. MetroTwit uses it and it's got a nice in-app updater interface, so it seems flexible (at least to a certain degree). For launching on startup, it's possible to do so, but methods to do so are quite hacky and don't work that well.

Implement it yourself! It will be fun. Create a separate application that only contains update logic i.e., fetch the files online, download them, replace local files, and show that visually to the user.

So your main application could check for updates, and if they exist it would prompt the user with the possibility to update. If the user wants to, it will run the update program, close itself (so the update can happen) and presto.

The only things you need are readily avaliable in C#, FTP access and IO.

Edit: I know it's not something terribly easy, but it's a perfect chance to learn:

• How to (properly) download files, in an abstracted way that can be extended to ftp, http, etc.
• How to (properly) do a simple task over many files - copying or overwriting them (this implies error handling).
• Practice (because there's no "proper" way) to layer and encapsulate a piece of software.
• How to deal with the OS/other software (antivirus/firewall/etc) not cooperating.

These are all things we all need to know well - If it takes some weeks to code an updater it means you were needing some weeks of learning. If you don't need to learn, time to hone your skills! If you don't know if you need, time to find out! :)

Note: I know I do need to learn better file and network I/O