software update / question answer needed

[ladoo]

i shared a programme with someone but now i made a mistake sharing it, it will go in wrong hands

is there anything i can do to make an update so when ever his application is open it will ask for update because i forgot to put auto update check in programme?

[Jacob Roman]

Yes. First of all you must have a server. Your program needs the client end programmed into it. The client end must communicate with the server end. Also your program will need to bypass the firewall (not sure how to implement this as I tried multiplayer programming before) or there will be no communication between the client and server. Otherwise your program is stuck only able to run through 127.0.0.1 And you can do this with either the Winsock object, Winsock API's, or even DirectPlay which is part of DirectX. OpenGL also has a 3rd party version but I forgot the name. And you can code your project to not run unless its up to date.

Just dont be like Apple's iTunes. The updates are so annoying I stopped updating altogether.

[ladoo]

i have my server , like i said i didnt add any code into the programme to check server for updated version numbers because at first i trusted the guy and now got betrayed i need to stop it from working

[Doogle]

Take a step back and think. The code you distributed doesn't have any methodology programmed into it to check for updates so you can't wave a Magic Wand and make it do so.

If the code you distributed connects to the Server in some way then you could modify your new version of the client to 'identify themselves' to the Server or else they get disconnected. That way all your 'new' clients can do whatever but the 'rogue' client will not (as it's not programmed to identify itself and the Server can disconnect them or whatever).

e.g. On connect, use a Protocol such as:
Server -> New Client: "What Version are you?"
New Client -> Server: "I'm version 2.0"
Server -> New Client: "OK"
Server -> Old Client: "What Version are you?"
Old Client -> Server: "Don't understand the question" (or no response)
If "Don't understand ": Server disconnects Old Client
If no response from Old Client after a period of time: Server disconnects Old Client

Whether you get a "Don't Understand'" response or nothing from the Old Client depends on how you wrote the Cient to respond to 'unknown' responses from the Server - my guess is that you just ignore them, so you'll have to impement the 'no response after a period of time' method.

Of course you have to make sure that all the clients you have distributed to 'non-rogue' users are at the new version (and also that the 'rogue' user can't get their hands on it !)

[ladoo]

thanks doogle sir