Glossary

• Application directory/Local directory/Root path: the directory in which your application is installed, e.g. C:\Program Files\MyApp
• Cache directory: a path that holds the temporary patch files while applying a patch. Its contents are automatically cleaned after a successful patch. It is located at {Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)}\SimplePatchToolDls\{PROJECT_NAME}
• Log file: a text file holding a copy of SimplePatchTool's logs and any raised exceptions. It is located at {Application directory}\{PatchParameters.LOG_FILE_NAME}
• Repair patch: a patch method that checks each file in the local directory one by one and downloads the out-of-date files from the server
• Incremental patch: a patch method that can update the app from a specific version to a specific version (e.g. from 1.0 to 1.1). So, a 1.0->1.1 incremental patch can be applied only if the installed app's version is 1.0. Similarly, if there are two incremental patches (1.0->1.1 and 1.1->1.2) and the app's version is 1.0, these patches are applied consecutively to update the app to the 1.2 version. An incremental patch holds binary diffs of the files that have changed in that version
• Installer patch: a patch method that downloads a single archive containing all the files in the version and extracts it to update the out-of-date files
• Binary diff: stores the changes between two versions of the same file. It is usually more efficient to download a small diff file rather than downloading the whole file
• Self patching: when enabled, patcher does not modify the files in the application directory but rather apply the patches to the cache directory. After all patches are applied there, application terminates itself and launches the self patcher. Self patching is the way to go when e.g. you want the launcher to patch itself, because apps can't patch themselves in conventional ways while they are still running
• Self patcher: a tiny executable that finishes self patching by moving the patch files from the cache directory to the application directory and deleting any obsolete files afterwards
• Obsolete file: files in the application directory that are not a part of the latest version of the app. These files are deleted during the patch
• VersionInfo: an xml file that holds all the necessary information to update an app: each file's hash, file size, and download url, as well as a summary of the incremental patches
• PatchInfo: an xml file that holds detailed information about an incremental patch. Before applying an incremental patch, SimplePatchTool fetches the corresponding PatchInfo
• ProjectInfo: an xml file that is used to customize the patch creation process; only available when using ProjectManager to create patches