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Comment by lousken | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice if microsoft had windows update for .net, visual c++, office, windows, edge ... just all their software in one updater, but that would be too easy...

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Isn't that... Windows Update? At least last time I looked it would update .net runtimes, Office, what else? OK, Visual Studio has its own update mechanism. Edge is part of the OS, isn't it?

it's still an opt-in setting though. Windows and OS-components like drivers and Edge do get auto updated yes, but to enable Microsoft Update, you still need to turn on a setting in the Settings app. even setting up a new PC/laptop with windows, this is off by default.

e.g. visual c++ isnt included tho; Office 365 same thing

That's likely because of antitrust. If they let their software hook into Windows Update, then they would need to let everybody do the same.

What antitrust? It is a security feature and for regular apps windows has ms store that can do auto updating as well.

And teams. And new outlook. And powertoys. Onedrive. SQL Server. The Microsoft store. Winget. I'm also not confident Windows Update actually does update Office, which also retains its own update mechanism.

It did work that way for .NET versions but the patches and upgrades caused too many bugs and incompatibility. Folks would install old .net versions anyway.

The pattern moved to packaging in all your dependencies.

Winget/Microsoft Store etc could auto-update your apps even with packaged .NET DLLs, though.

It's (somewhat) possible with winget already.

IIRC winget is another mechanism with a CLI front-end that resembles a package manager. What it does is either hook into the windows store (another channel) for packages, or points to an installer which likely runs silently in the background, for example 'winget show adobe.acrobat.reader.64-bit' or 'microsoft.vcredist.2015+.x64'

You mean…service packs?

No, "Microsoft Update" is what it was once called (see e.g. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/...)

Can't believe that at one point Windows could do updates through a browser interface.

I mean we've gone full circle and are now deploying browser interfaces as full blown applications to get around the bit where you give a browser system access, but still.

Umm, yeah…I was going to let this go but “Microsoft Update” is a later, more annoying though perhaps necessary turn of events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_pack

https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_service_packs

What context are you responding to?

> It would be nice if microsoft had windows update for .net, visual c++, office, windows, edge ... just all their software in one updater...

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