Joomla Component Automated Update

Question

I develop a Joomla component. At the moment whenever I release a new version I ask the user to download a zip file and to manually upload the changed files via FTP. While this is ok for small releases, when a lot of files have been modified it is a slow, painful and error prone process. As alarming as it may be, many users installed Joomla via Fantastico one-click install and are not familiar with or comfortable using FTP.

I have recently added support for Joomla 1.6 which seems to provide a nice update facility for automated updates. Unfortunately the documentation seems to be lacking, e.g. what is the tags element, can the download type not be "full" and if so what would that look like?

Can any one explain the update process better or provide any good examples?

Joomla 1.5 is going to be around for a long time, is there a similar update process for 1.5?

Answer 1

For Joomla 1.5 at least, there is no need to use FTP for updating. In your XML manifest you can set the component to update. Rather than download, upzip, and FTP up, all your users would need to do is download the entire package, then install via the Joomla admin.

I am not sure about 1.6, your best bet would be to take apart a 1.6 component. It is my understanding that it is a rather simple process.