Checking For Maintenance

If you enter a <MaintenanceCheckURL> to VersionInfo and store a text file at that url, contents of that text file will be used to query whether or not servers are currently under maintenance. This text file has a very simple syntax:

• if its first character is not 1, it means that servers are functional
• otherwise, it means that servers are currently under maintenance. SimplePatchTool won't apply patches while servers are under maintenance. In this case, the second character of the text file can be used to provide additional information to the Scripting API
  • if it is not 1, it means that users can continue using the application while the servers are under maintenance (UnderMaintenance_CanLaunchApp)
  • otherwise, users are not allowed to launch the app until the servers become functional again (UnderMaintenance_AbortApp)

Please note that the second character has a meaning only if you provide a custom logic for each scenario.

The good thing about MaintenanceCheckURL is that, if you want to make sure that none of your clients are patching their applications while you update the files on the server, you can put the servers under maintenance for ~15 minutes before updating the files on the server, which should be enough for running SimplePatchTool instances to detect the change and stop executing. But don't forget to mark the servers as functional again after updating the files on the server.