9 replies to this topic

[Joel P]

I use AP quite a bit for keeping client's PCs up to date. I'm thinking of starting a community driven initiative to add more standalone apps to Autopatcher, probably starting with non-IE browsers, AV/security products, productivity suites, and email clients(mostly FOSS). Trying to gauge the community interest in such a project, please vote.

[_def_x_]

I would add - Not Sure? Let me explain...

The idea isn't bad - IMO - but the first issue would be the script, there simply isn't enough people to keep the script updated, and with the addition of any AV product the updates would be often, this would become very problematic quickly. Second point is (I've tried it), using AutoPatcher to launch stand-alone apps is just too clunky (if this is what you had in mind), launching portable apps from a shortcut - IMO - is much easier. You could always experiment and when you get something going submit it for consideration, and of course you would be the script maintainer - if they even gave the idea a second thought.

Again, maybe APUP for downloading an assembled group of portable apps but AutoPatcher launching them, I've tried it and think it is much easier to launch portable apps from a shortcut. What makes AutoPatcher so great for updates is it offers a GUI to chain multiple updates together, silently, in one process, and one reboot, for an app that you want to open - AutoPatcher - IMO - makes less sense.

Don't let my opinion deter you, give it a shot and see what you think, if the powers that be around here like it, and you want to be responsible for maintaining the script, well, you're golden.

[Joel P]

gUiTaR_mIkE, on 21 June 2010 - 06:41 PM, said:

I would add - Not Sure? Let me explain...

The idea isn't bad - IMO - but the first issue would be the script, there simply isn't enough people to keep the script updated, and with the addition of any AV product the updates would be often, this would become very problematic quickly. Second point is (I've tried it), using AutoPatcher to launch stand-alone apps is just too clunky (if this is what you had in mind), launching portable apps from a shortcut - IMO - is much easier. You could always experiment and when you get something going submit it for consideration, and of course you would be the script maintainer - if they even gave the idea a second thought.

Again, maybe APUP for downloading an assembled group of portable apps but AutoPatcher launching them, I've tried it and think it is much easier to launch portable apps from a shortcut. What makes AutoPatcher so great for updates is it offers a GUI to chain multiple updates together, silently, in one process, and one reboot, for an app that you want to open - AutoPatcher - IMO - makes less sense.

Don't let my opinion deter you, give it a shot and see what you think, if the powers that be around here like it, and you want to be responsible for maintaining the script, well, you're golden.

Thanks for your comments, the goal would be to install applications and keep them up to date. APUP would download the offline installation files from the software authors (or some other trusted mirror) and then Autopatcher would detect, then install or update the application as necessary.

It works well enough for Adobe Reader, Java, Flash and others. Applications that have MSI installers should also be considerably easier. As a matter of fact I would like to rewrite the Reader install section to use the adobe administrative installation msi and bypass the Nosso extraction. It would be pretty trivial to change, speed up the installation, and should use the built in-progress bar as opposed to it's own. I hope this clarifies the objective, we want to install an application on the local computer to be used later, not launch a portable app.

One concern I have is that adding more large app would add considerable time to checksum the installers, since this phase is done before the selection process they are checked whether or not they would be installed. Especially for some large packages like MS or open office.

[dfdff3000]

There should be a couple of concerns for the AutoPatcher team. The first one being a longstanding problem of not having enough release maintainers. The few that are here are seriously overworked as it is. Some come and go, but the only constants I've seen for the last year or so are domenico and Cristiano. Others offer great advice, but aren't maintainers.

Another issue that shouldn't be overlooked is about how we are our own worst enemies. Lots of times folks use AutoPatcher and just install everything, with little or no knowledge of what they're doing - mainly the extras. Although I haven't seen in happen often, there have been times where someone has come to the forums and cursed AutoPatcher for something they did on their own. I can kind of see this happening in the future with the addition of more standalone apps.

Having said all that, for anyone that knows what they're doing .. it could be a nice addition. I'm thinking smaller apps like ccleaner and such. I'm sure there are plenty of others, but ccleaner was the only program that popped in my head .

[DesertJerry]

Cristiano and I have been communicating for over three months trying to get Windows Addons\Network Monitor updated with parsers and modified to show x86 and x64 versions - and we still have not finished what was started. Given the amount of time spent on this I really don't see how AutoPaatcher's coverage can be greatly expanded beyond what it already is.

Edited by DesertJerry, 26 June 2010 - 06:59 PM.

[Cristiano]

well, it's possible do new modules and share them, even in the easy way, like sharing the modules and pointing the download link for it. i did that today for java, because i'm pretty sure that this one is an thing that a lot of guys may require in their daily basis, but the same thing could happen with any other software, but add them into the scripts is another story. talking about free anti-virus only, avg has about 80mb, avira, 30mb, avast, 48mb and i'm pretty sure that there's more tools that a lot of guys may require in daily basis, so an script for this could be huge. by other hand, sharing the modules can be an nice thing to do. also, a lot of guys just come, blame and go. others, come, download and go. i already know that this is the common behavior, but most of people that share some module doesn't get any "thanks" and us not to come back. anyway, it's an idea that should be feed. only one thing: i can't create new sections in the forums, just sticky the topics.

of course, i can help with taking detections, point directions, etc, but i'm only one...

[]s

[_def_x_]

Sorry Joel P, I guess I misunderstood your use of the term standalone, I thought you meant portable - my bad

[bizzybody]

CCleaner, Unlocker, CPU-Z, those are three useful utilities that get frequent updates. None of them do any harm simply by being installed.

What would make for a very useful utility is one that downloads the manual updates for Spybot Search & Destroy, Malware Bytes, Avast, Avira and other anti-malware and antivirus utilities.

Why? Because many viruses and other malware specifically block such apps from being able to access their own update sites. Having a single utility to get them all on a clean PC then "manually" install the updates on an infested PC would be a quicker method than having to hop around to every one of those sites to get the updates then install them one by one.

Frequently, updates for those apps include fixes for malware blocks that prevent them from running, let alone being able to self update.

I'd like to see it as a separate program from Autopatcher. Call it CleanupPatcher or something like that so people know it's made for doing offline updates of security software.

I dunno how it would go about detecting which security software is installed so it wouldn't make updates available to install for software that's not on the PC.

[_def_x_]

bizzybody, on 09 November 2010 - 08:28 AM, said:

What would make for a very useful utility is one that downloads the manual updates for Spybot Search & Destroy, Malware Bytes, Avast, Avira and other anti-malware and antivirus utilities.

I think what you're looking for is AMT (Anti-Malware Toolkit). Tarun is active on his own forum, MSFN, and the Malwarebytes forum - check it out.

... AMT Wiki
... Suggest programs and categories for AMT2

I would register and offer input, Tarun is a really nice guy.

[xaneth]

 dfdff3000, on 26 June 2010 - 04:43 PM, said:

There should be a couple of concerns for the AutoPatcher team. The first one being a longstanding problem of not having enough release maintainers. The few that are here are seriously overworked as it is. Some come and go, but the only constants I've seen for the last year or so are domenico and Cristiano. Others offer great advice, but aren't maintainers.

Another issue that shouldn't be overlooked is about how we are our own worst enemies. Lots of times folks use AutoPatcher and just install everything, with little or no knowledge of what they're doing - mainly the extras. Although I haven't seen in happen often, there have been times where someone has come to the forums and cursed AutoPatcher for something they did on their own. I can kind of see this happening in the future with the addition of more standalone apps.

Having said all that, for anyone that knows what they're doing .. it could be a nice addition. I'm thinking smaller apps like ccleaner and such. I'm sure there are plenty of others, but ccleaner was the only program that popped in my head .

yah i agree and ccleaner would be good; also k-lite codec pack or equivalent, deamon tools lite, a defrag program like [iobit superdefrag], and some antivirse stuff