[Lazarus] Accessing WinControls from DLL

[SteveG]

My ERP has an auto-update feature in the main application (called 
"rnge2.exe"). The app does the following steps:

1) Check if there's a newer version. The new releases are replicated to 
each customer's branch.
2) If there's a newer version, download, md5sum-check and rename to 
"rnge2.new"
3) Execute an external application to swap the files; the app renames 
"rnge2.exe" to "rnge2.old", then renames "rnge2.new" to "rnge2.exe" and 
runs the new version.

Usually the old version's file is locked, so the external application 
has to wait for a while until it's released. In my case the app tries a 
couple times for it.

Mark Morgan Lloyd escreveu:
> To what extent could a Lazarus app replace itself with a new version 
> without interruption?
>
> For example, if the main form had a menu at the top, synedit with 
> popups and a status bar at the bottom, presumably much of the 
> "intelligence" could be moved into dll/so libraries which could be 
> closed and reopened.
>
> Would the dynamic libraries be able to get at properties (e.g. main 
> menu) of the visible components? Would they be able to display forms 
> and dialogs on their own account?
>


-- 
Alexsander da Rosa
Twitter: @alexrosa