For as far back as I can remember, CyanogenMod has been dependent on ROM Manager for updates. As of yesterday’s nightly build, the popular distribution severed its ties with ROM Manager with its own OTA Updater.
ROM Manager is a great tool, but it has two major limitations – it requires the use of ClockworkMod Recovery, and nightly and experimental builds are only available on ROM Manager Premium, which will set you back $5.99. Now, I have no issue with developers making money from their efforts, especially considering how much Koush (the developer of ROM Manager) contributes to the community, but it always seemed at odds to me that an integral part of CyanogenMod, a community-driven, open source project, required the spending of a not insignificant amount of money. Well, apparently the CM team felt the same way, and their new solution is a bare-bones, fully open-source utility with one purpose in mind – to update CyanogenMod. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support push notifications, since they require the Google Apps framework, which is not included in CM, but it does allow you to choose whether to update to stable, experimental or nightly builds, and how often it will check for updates.
Download the latest nightly for your device here.
Just used it to get to yesterdays nightly, very smooth and well done.