Hello and welcome to our forums,
First of all, let me try to explain the differences between a major upgrade and a patch.
A
major upgrade means the uninstallation of a product, followed by the installation of a newer product (with a higher version). One of the major upgrade's advantages is the fact that, in case the older product is not present on the computer, the setup will be treated as a first time install.
A
patch represents only the diffs between two setups. Its advantage is that it is much smaller than a major upgrade, but it can only be applied on computers that already have the previous version installed.
Can the updater be used for small incremental updates (only updating a few files) or is that what "patches" are meant to but Updater cannot?
Yes, patches can also be applied through the Auto Updater. Simply configure the patch as update, just like you configure a new version of the package. For the Updater it doesn't matter if the update is an MSI, EXE or MSP file.
For more information about the updater, you can check our
"Using the Updater" article.
Let me know if this helps!
Regards,
Catalin