2 months ago we released wyBuild & wyUpdate v2.5. This release adds a free automatic updater control for C# & VB.NET apps. And because we wanted to keep things simple we left the wyUpdate.exe to do all the hard work (checking, download, installing) in the background while the AutomaticUpdater control is visible on your app’s main form. We wanted the AutomaticUpdater to be able to control the update steps, view progress, and cancel the updating. But we also wanted to keep all the updating logic in the wyUpdate.exe. For this to be successful we needed a way for the AutomaticUpdater control to talk to wyUpdate.exe while it’s running.
The Answer: Inter-process communication (IPC)Inter-Process communication is a fancy computer science way of saying “processes that can talk to each other”. Google Chrome uses IPC to communicate between tabs of the browser & plugins. It’s a simple way to keep parts of your program isolated from crashes. For instance, if a tab of Google Chrome crashes only that single tab is killed. The rest of your tabs will continue to function normally.
Lots of bad ways to do IPCNow that you know what inter-process communication is, let me tell you the worst ways to do it. * Shared memory: Difficult to set up & difficult to manage.
* Shared files / registry: Very slow due to the writing & reading to/from disk. Difficult to manage.
* SendMessage / PostMessage: Locks up the UI thread while the message is processed. Messages are limited to integer values. Can’t communicate from a non-admin process to an admin process. Assumes that your processes have a window.
Read more: wyday
The Answer: Inter-process communication (IPC)Inter-Process communication is a fancy computer science way of saying “processes that can talk to each other”. Google Chrome uses IPC to communicate between tabs of the browser & plugins. It’s a simple way to keep parts of your program isolated from crashes. For instance, if a tab of Google Chrome crashes only that single tab is killed. The rest of your tabs will continue to function normally.
Lots of bad ways to do IPCNow that you know what inter-process communication is, let me tell you the worst ways to do it. * Shared memory: Difficult to set up & difficult to manage.
* Shared files / registry: Very slow due to the writing & reading to/from disk. Difficult to manage.
* SendMessage / PostMessage: Locks up the UI thread while the message is processed. Messages are limited to integer values. Can’t communicate from a non-admin process to an admin process. Assumes that your processes have a window.
Read more: wyday