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Provision

Advanced OTA update server for commercial software.

Provision is a robust, self-hosted Over-The-Air (OTA) update server designed to manage and distribute software updates efficiently. By leveraging binary diffing and intelligent graph-based patch pathfinding, Provision ensures that your clients download the absolute minimum payload required to stay up-to-date.

  • Intelligent patch pathfinding: Graph-based BFS routing for seamless multi-version jumps.
  • Binary diffing: Drastically reduced update payload sizes using bsdiff.
  • Atomic deployments: Zero-downtime internal state changes leveraging atomic symlink swaps.
  • Multi-product support: Manage multiple separate applications from a single instance, each secured with isolated developer API keys.

Instead of forcing users to re-download an entire application for a minor bug fix, Provision calculates binary deltas. When a developer uploads an update, the system relies on the bsdiff algorithm to compare the new files against the existing master copy. The resulting patch files contain only the exact byte-level differences. Clients download these compact diffs and apply them locally using bspatch, reducing bandwidth consumption by up to 90%.

Software clients do not always update sequentially. If a client is currently on v1.0 and the latest release is v4.1.3, there may not be a direct, pre-computed 1.0 -> 4.1.3 patch bundle available.

Provision solves this elegantly using Patch Pathfinding. Under the hood, the server maintains an adjacency graph of all known version transitions (e.g., 1.0 -> 1.1, 1.1 -> 1.1.1). When an outdated client requests an update, Provision utilizes a Breadth-First Search (BFS) algorithm to dynamically discover the shortest sequential upgrade route. It then packages the required intermediate step-by-step patches into a single, cohesive .zip bundle, allowing the client to sequentially fast-forward to the latest version in one operation.

Installation & Deployment

Provision is built in Go and designed for zero-dependency deployments.

Docker

The repository includes a ready-to-use Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml for isolated containerized environments.

No Docker

For direct host deployments, a systemd unit file is provided.

  1. Build the binary:
go build -o provision-server ./cmd/server
sudo mv provision-server /usr/local/bin/
  1. Install the service:
sudo cp init/provision.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now provision

Configuration

Configure the server via Environment Variables. In Docker, these are defined in docker-compose.yml. For systemd deployments, place them in /etc/provision/provision.conf:

Variable Default Description
PORT 8000 Port for the HTTP API
DATA_DIR /var/lib/provision/storage Directory to store master binaries, zips, and patches
DATABASE_PATH /var/lib/provision/provision.db Filepath to the SQLite database
ADMIN_KEY (None) Global API key required to create/delete products globally
MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE 524288000 Max file upload size in bytes (Default: 500MB)
LOG_LEVEL info Logging verbosity (debug, info, warn, error)

API Overview

The server exposes a JSON HTTP API authenticated via the X-API-Key header.

  • GET /api/v1/products - List all products (Requires ADMIN_KEY).
  • POST /api/v1/products - Create a new product.
  • DELETE /api/v1/products/{id} - Delete a product and its assets.
  • POST /api/v1/products/{id}/versions/initial - Upload the base v1.0 zip bundle.
  • POST /api/v1/products/{id}/versions/update - Upload a delta update bundle with its manifest against a previous version.
  • GET /api/v1/products/{id}/check?current_version=X - Check if updates are available and determine if a full download or patch path is required.
  • GET /api/v1/products/{id}/patch?from_version=X&to_version=Y - Download a dynamically built multi-step patch bundle.
  • GET /api/v1/products/{id}/download - Download the latest full master zip.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.