So some of the software I write has bugs in it.   Yes I admit it.   Little small niggles that over time need to be ironed out.   Furthermore those pesky users keep wanting new and exciting things added to their mobile applications.

To keep things moving along about a year ago at Anglia we added an automatic update facility that compares the version of the client application against either a web-service call to return a version number, or looking in a replicated SQL Compact table for a current version number.

However the biggest issue ws faced, was ensuring that the install of the new application is pain free to the end users (and a good way of disguising my behind the scenes fixes).   Windows Mobile has long had a great command line tool for installing CAB files.   WCELOAD.EXE   up until day told the world with a series of dialogs that I was fixing their software.     But today,  I found out how to silence these onscreen admissions of buggy software/user requests (maybe not in that order).

So when I new version to be installed,   I quit my running application,  launch a small program that pulls down over the network the new cab file.    Then from code  I issue the magic command line -

wceload "CABFILE.CAB" /silent

And the world keeps turning.....