Air application incremental update

Question

Hi All,
I have an AIR application of more than 300 MB.
For update I am using NativeApplicationUpdater-0.5.1.swc.
Whenever there is a small update, user have to download the entire installer package which is quite frustrating.
Is there any mechanism we can download only the updated files and push it to the existing application.
Please suggest.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I believe the installation directory will get replaced, but not the applicationStorageDirectory, so what I've done is when the application runs for the first time (or after update) I copy the installed assets to applicationStorageDirectory. Future updates can incrementally update/add assets this way.
Keep in mind that if you have multiple incremental updates and someone updates from, say, version 2 to version 4, they will not get the incremental update in version 3. My solution was simply to require a full update if the current version was more than a required minimum version specified by the current update, which was usually onyl 1 version behind.
Another way I've done this with a more complex app that used a large library of media assets was to only install a manifest of required files, and the app would download any it didn't already have from a server when they were required (with a "downloading" message in the app).
Hope that helps.
-Aaron