For the impatient, check out the demo | source..

Intro

Creating desktop applications in Air with html and JavaScript is a joy for any web oriented developer. You get the same environment to work in, jQuery included, and the ability to create desktop based applications fast. The only thing problem you encounter is the switch in concept of updating the desktop application with a new version. It’s no longer as easy as updating the site, you need to get the user to download the update..

The good news is that Adobe has made it really easy to set up a workflow where the application automatically updates itself.
All you need is a web site to host the updated versions, a small xml describing the version, and Air takes care of the rest.

There are some nice Tutorials available, and the documentation is fairly good.
You customize the update interface, localize and hook into almost every step in the update process.

However, for open source applications, affording a web site might be a bit out of the budget.

Here Github steps in to offer not only an affordable (free), but also reliable, fast and easy to manage solution.

What better way than to simply push the changes using git to Github?

So how is it done?

If you’re not a Github member, do join, it’s free and it’s great!

Download/Clone/Fork the example project

Open the directory updater and notice the following xml files:

config.xml:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
    <configuration xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/framework/update/configuration/1.0">  
        <url>http://github.com/erikzaadi/AirOnGithub/raw/master/updater/update.xml</url>  
        <delay>2</delay>  
    </configuration>  
</xml>

update.xml:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>  
    <update xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/framework/update/description/1.0">  
        <version>2.0</version>  
        <url>http://github.com/downloads/erikzaadi/AirOnGithub/AirOnGithub-2.0.air</url>  
        <description><![CDATA[  
This would be a good place to put release notes etc  
        ]]></description>  
    </update>  
</xml>

The Air updater framework will open up the config.xml file in order to to get the url of update.xml, which includes version, description and most important, the url to the updated Air file.

Whenever the framework recognizes that a new version is available, it’ll launch the updating process, downloading and applying the update.

Since Github are kind enough to expose such a wonderful api on their site, you can access the update.xml either on the master branch as I did, or on a special branch/tag preserved for the update mechanism.
Furthermore, Github allows you to upload files to the download section, served by the cloud to ensure superfast speed.

If you want, you can even add a installer badge using Github Pages.
(Sample not included in the example mentioned before, see demo | source for the jQAPI project as reference)

Example Air file | Example Source

Enjoy!

Erik