What does the updater do?

[TJMeneses]

I understand that LO 3.5 implements (or re-implements) an updating mechanism. It sounds like a cool concept, but I haven’t seen anything that details just how it works or what it’s supposed to do. Does it just pull the latest binaries/installers from TDF servers? Does it download patches that can be applied to the current installed build to bring it up to date (which would be an excellent use of the feature)?

If ever there is full documentation for how the feature works, can someone please tell me?

[Kunjomachen]

see this too. Is LO planning incremental update?

[cloph]

It is a check-for-updates only, it doesn’t offer fully automated updates and there are no smaller update-patches for the time being, but rather offers you to trigger a download of the new version.

You would still have to download the full installer and have to manually run the installer to complete the update.

So for the time being it is just a convenience feature.

In larger (corporate) installations, you can also point it to your own server and server a static.xml file - see http://www.mail-archive.com/libreoffice@lists.freedesktop.org/msg20854.html for example.

Edit:
It can also be configured to autmatically download the installer in Tools|Options → LibreOffice → Online Update → “Download updates automatically” (disabled by default, you can configure a target path at the same location)

[TJMeneses]

Oh, alright. Thanks for the response; at least I know what to expect from it (which is, at least for 3.5, not a lot). Still, I really hope that future versions of it can eventually auto-install, and even auto-“patch” your build. That would be in my opinion the ultimate state of the updater.