How it works: Create a self-updating Delphi application (automatic updates)

With the Internet being easily accessible with sufficient speed everywhere on the planet, it would be amazing if we had an easy way to keep our Delphi applications up-to-date on customer’s systems. Whenever we release a new version, users should be notified of an update and give them the opportunity to update if they would like to.

Update mechanisms bring many challenges that are cumbersome to implement especially if you want to support multiple versions of Windows. For me, being able to replace the running executable and User Access Control come to mind right away. Also, you application most likely will consist of more than one file and the number of files might differ between versions…

In the new episode of How it Works with Holger, I will introduce a VCL component from TMS that will solve all those issues and provide an easy solution to offer automatic updates in your applications.

Before jumping into the video, it might be good to know that the Internet using HTTP or HTTPS is not the only source you can use for your updates. Internal solutions might provide update files from network shares. Further, you might use FTPS or SFTP. Both FTP solutions are supported which I did not emphasize in the video. The focus is on HTTP to get you started right away.

An overview of the full feature set of the control is given at the beginning of the video. Enjoy!