How do I detect if the specific Delphi IDE is running?

Question

I'm working on a component installer (only for Delphi XE2) and I would like to detect if the Delphi XE2 IDE is running. How would you detect it?

P.S. I know about the TAppBuilder window class name, but I need to detect also the IDE version.

Answer 1

These are the steps to determine if the Delphi XE2 is running

1) First Read the location of the the bds.exe file from the App entry in the \Software\Embarcadero\BDS\9.0 registry key which can be located in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Root key.

2) Then using the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot function you can check if exist a exe with the same name running.

3) Finally using the PID of the last processed entry you can resolve the full file path of the Exe (using the GetModuleFileNameEx function) and then compare the names again.

Check this sample code

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}

{$R *.res}

uses

  Registry,
  PsAPI,
  TlHelp32,
  Windows,
  SysUtils;

function ProcessFileName(dwProcessId: DWORD): string;
var
  hModule: Cardinal;
begin
  Result := '';
  hModule := OpenProcess(PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION or PROCESS_VM_READ, False, dwProcessId);
  if hModule <> 0 then
    try
      SetLength(Result, MAX_PATH);
      if GetModuleFileNameEx(hModule, 0, PChar(Result), MAX_PATH) > 0 then
        SetLength(Result, StrLen(PChar(Result)))
      else
        Result := '';
    finally
      CloseHandle(hModule);
    end;
end;

function IsAppRunning(const FileName: string): boolean;
var
  hSnapshot      : Cardinal;
  EntryParentProc: TProcessEntry32;
begin
  Result := False;
  hSnapshot := CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(TH32CS_SNAPPROCESS, 0);
  if hSnapshot = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then
    exit;
  try
    EntryParentProc.dwSize := SizeOf(EntryParentProc);
    if Process32First(hSnapshot, EntryParentProc) then
      repeat
        if CompareText(ExtractFileName(FileName), EntryParentProc.szExeFile) = 0 then
          if CompareText(ProcessFileName(EntryParentProc.th32ProcessID),  FileName) = 0 then
          begin
            Result := True;
            break;
          end;
      until not Process32Next(hSnapshot, EntryParentProc);
  finally
    CloseHandle(hSnapshot);
  end;
end;

function RegReadStr(const RegPath, RegValue: string; var Str: string;
  const RootKey: HKEY): boolean;
var
  Reg: TRegistry;
begin
  try
    Reg := TRegistry.Create;
    try
      Reg.RootKey := RootKey;
      Result      := Reg.OpenKey(RegPath, True);
      if Result then
        Str := Reg.ReadString(RegValue);
    finally
      Reg.Free;
    end;
  except
    Result := False;
  end;
end;

function RegKeyExists(const RegPath: string; const RootKey: HKEY): boolean;
var
  Reg: TRegistry;
begin
  try
    Reg := TRegistry.Create;
    try
      Reg.RootKey := RootKey;
      Result      := Reg.KeyExists(RegPath);
    finally
      Reg.Free;
    end;
  except
    Result := False;
  end;
end;


function GetDelphiXE2LocationExeName: string;
Const
 Key = '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\9.0';
begin
  Result:='';
    if RegKeyExists(Key, HKEY_CURRENT_USER) then
    begin
      RegReadStr(Key, 'App', Result, HKEY_CURRENT_USER);
      exit;
    end;

    if RegKeyExists(Key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) then
      RegReadStr(Key, 'App', Result, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE);
end;


Var
 Bds : String;

begin
  try
     Bds:=GetDelphiXE2LocationExeName;
     if Bds<>'' then
     begin
       if  IsAppRunning(Bds) then
        Writeln('The Delphi XE2 IDE Is running')
       else
        Writeln('The Delphi XE2 IDE Is not running')
     end
     else
     Writeln('The Delphi XE2 IDE Is was not found');
  except
    on E: Exception do
      Writeln(E.ClassName, ': ', E.Message);
  end;
  Readln;
end.

Addtional resources. Detecting installed delphi versions

Answer 2

Check DebugHook <> 0. The down side is that currently if your app is built with packages, DebugHook will return 0. But normally this is would be a very elegant and simple test. Works great in D2009, I just noticed that it has the package dependency bug in XE2 (http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=105365).