Am Di, den 02.12.2003 schrieb Arend Lammertink um 10:59: > I've done some googleing and it looks like it is possible to rename a > file that's in use (from the command-line). Of course, there's no way to > find out if this works _all_ the time, but according to > http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=9486169wnr%40ttelmah.demon.co.uk > it should work: [...] > If he's correct that MS also uses this method, it shouldn't be too > difficult to just rename the file inuse and delete it later if it's not > in use anymore.
This procedure, to schedule file replacements for the next reboot, really seems brain-damaged to me. It looks like an ugly work-around. It could imagine that it would be better to modify the EXE loader in Windows (and DLLs are EXE to Windows AFAIR) to copy the executable to a special location hidden to applications and users first and execute it from there. Sure, we would lose a lot of performance doing it that way, but OTOH this would make Windows behave like I expect it from experience with usual OSes like SunOS or Linux. And, we will not run into problems after an update, like it has to expected when a new EXE requires a changed data or config file format which isn't compatible to the old version. Anyone played around with this approach more in-depth? Haven't done serious Windows development any more for ten years now... Regards, Holger Spielmann
