The past few days I have been utterly bored. My exams are over, but the new semester won't begin until October. Time to kill is something I rarely find myself having, so the past couple of days have made me feel like a royal slacker. When I get that feeling I usually try to "torture" myself -- both mentally and physically. So the obvious solution for me was programming and gym. I have mentioned several times that we are working on something, so given the mood I'm in right now, I think I might as well post some very early screenshots of what's to come.

Remember, my "job" here is programming, not making the actual releases. Since I'm sure your first question will be "when," let me just say that it depends on how fast team members can write the "scripts" for this application.

Since I'm the code-and-try type, I just had to attempt writing a script of my own. I tried writing one for the English XP release. So far the script covers all of Microsoft's critical patches and most of their non-critical ones. I actually ran into trouble with one of the non-critical patches (one which apparently need to be extracted first -- but probably in a non-standard way).

Anyway, here's what I got so far:

My starting point.

AutoPatcher fetched a link with available releases and automatically selected those applicable to my system.

Downloading the selected items. Note that Microsoft stuff comes directly from Microsoft. If the process is interrupted, the program will pickup where it left, when rerun. When downloading is done, you will end up with the usual AutoPatcher folder layout.

As I said in some comments, the only change is that instead of downloading one huge file via your browser/download manager, you will be downloading many smaller ones via a custom downloader/preparer. The bonus is of course:
1. Easier to combine releases. You just select which ones you want to get and they are combined for you.
2. Easier to upgrade. You just run the updater each month so you can get the latest updates added to AutoPatcher.
3. No need to use NSIS anymore. Once you're done downloading you can transfer the folder in a USB stick or CD.
4. No more confusion. There will only be one package offered on autopatcher.com (the updater). No more "which release do I need" or "do I need to download the update release" or "will NSIS install anything on my computer."

Comments are welcome :-)

Antonis Kaladis