Tales of a developer

In a previous blog I wrote about the perils of auto-updating the EVE launcher on Windows when it is installed in Program Files - a protected folder - as it would elevate the process. Due to a bug (that's now been fixed) the launcher would then also start elevated after the update. Any files it would write in that elevated sessions would be owned by the administrator - subsequent launcher sessions where the launcher was started regularly would not be able to overwrite those files. To further complicate matters we were occasionally getting reports of the client reporting damaged files even when the launcher seemed to be downloading and staging files successfully. Protecting system files This turned out be due to a very helpful feature of Windows, actually going back to Vista, when the UAC was introduced. When a legacy application wants to create a file in a protected location where it does not have write permissions, Windows will open a file in the Virtual Store folder, rath...

The EVE launcher has an auto update feature - when it detects that a newer version has been deployed, it downloads any changed files and updates itself. The launcher executable can't overwrite the itself or the DLLs loaded so it uses a separate updater. After downloading, the launcher starts the updater and shuts itself down, then the updater replaces the launcher files and restarts the launcher. If the launcher is installed in Program Files, a protected folder, the launcher has to run the updater as an elevated process. Otherwise the updater will not able to overwrite any changed files in the launcher. Going up? At EVE Fanfest we had a roundtable where my team met with players to discuss the things we're working on - the launcher and Wine support. One player mentioned that he had noticed that the launcher would sometimes run in elevated mode, and asked me if it was possible that the update process was the reason. This got me thinking, and I looked over the code in the ...