Detecting installed Delphi versions.

October 27, 2010 by Rodrigo 12 Comments

The key to detect the Delphi (or Rad-Studio) installed versions in a system is check the existence of these registry keys under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER root.

UPDATE
Tondrej makes a good comment about to check the existence of the instalation in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE root, so the code has been modified.

for Borland Delphi until version 7

\Software\Borland\Delphi\DelphiVersion for example for Delphi 7 must be \Software\Borland\Delphi\7.0

for Borland Delphi 8 to Borland Development Studio 2006

\Software\Borland\BDS\BdsVersion for example for Borland Development Studio 2005 must be \Software\Borland\BDS\2.0

for Codegear RAD Studio 2009 and 2010

\Software\CodeGear\BDS\BdsVersion for example for RAD Studio 2009 must be \Software\CodeGear\BDS\6.0

and finally for Embarcadero RAD Studio (XE to XE5)

\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\BdsVersion for example for RAD Studio XE2 must be \Software\Embarcadero\BDS\9.0

Now you must check (and read) the existence of the “App” Value  which store the location of the Delphi (or Rad Studio) IDE.

Putting all together you can create an structure like this to access the information in the windows registry.

type
  TDelphiVersions =
  (
  Delphi4,
  Delphi5,
  Delphi6,
  Delphi7,
  Delphi8,
  Delphi2005,
  Delphi2006,
  Delphi2007,
  Delphi2009,
  Delphi2010,
  DelphiXE,
  DelphiXE2,
  DelphiXE3,
  DelphiXE4,
  DelphiXE5
  );

const
  DelphiVersionsNames: array[TDelphiVersions] of string = (
    'Delphi 4',
    'Delphi 5',
    'Delphi 6',
    'Delphi 7',
    'Delphi 8',
    'BDS 2005',
    'BDS 2006',
    'RAD Studio 2007',
    'RAD Studio 2009',
    'RAD Studio 2010',
    'RAD Studio XE',
    'RAD Studio XE2',
    'RAD Studio XE3',
    'RAD Studio XE4',
    'RAD Studio XE5'
    );

  DelphiRegPaths: array[TDelphiVersions] of string = (
    '\Software\Borland\Delphi\4.0',
    '\Software\Borland\Delphi\5.0',
    '\Software\Borland\Delphi\6.0',
    '\Software\Borland\Delphi\7.0',
    '\Software\Borland\BDS\2.0',
    '\Software\Borland\BDS\3.0',
    '\Software\Borland\BDS\4.0',
    '\Software\Borland\BDS\5.0',
    '\Software\CodeGear\BDS\6.0',
    '\Software\CodeGear\BDS\7.0',
    '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\8.0',
    '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\9.0',
    '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\10.0',
    '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\11.0',
    '\Software\Embarcadero\BDS\12.0'
);

and declaring a couple of helper functions to facilitate the work

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 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;

procedure ExtractIconFileToImageList(ImageList: TImageList; const Filename: string);
var
  FileInfo: TShFileInfo;
begin
  if FileExists(Filename) then
  begin
    FillChar(FileInfo, SizeOf(FileInfo), 0);
    SHGetFileInfo(PChar(Filename), 0, FileInfo, SizeOf(FileInfo), SHGFI_ICON or SHGFI_SMALLICON);
    if FileInfo.hIcon <> 0 then
    begin
      ImageList_AddIcon(ImageList.Handle, FileInfo.hIcon);
      DestroyIcon(FileInfo.hIcon);
    end;
  end;
end;

finally we can fill a listview with the result adding a fancy Delphi icon

Var
 item       : TListItem;
 DelphiComp : TDelphiVersions;
 FileName   : string;
 ImageIndex : Integer;
 Found      : Boolean;
begin
    for DelphiComp := Low(TDelphiVersions) to High(TDelphiVersions) do
    begin
       Found:=RegKeyExists(DelphiRegPaths[DelphiComp],HKEY_CURRENT_USER);
       if Found then
        Found:=RegReadStr(DelphiRegPaths[DelphiComp],'App',FileName,HKEY_CURRENT_USER) and FileExists(FileName);

       if not Found then
       begin
         Found:=RegKeyExists(DelphiRegPaths[DelphiComp],HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE);
         if Found then
           Found:=RegReadStr(DelphiRegPaths[DelphiComp],'App',FileName,HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) and FileExists(FileName);
       end;

        if Found then
        begin
           item:=ListViewIDEs.Items.Add;
           item.Caption:=DelphiVersionsNames[DelphiComp];
           item.SubItems.Add(FileName);
           ExtractIconFileToImageList(ImageList1,Filename);
           ImageIndex     :=ImageList1.Count-1;
           item.ImageIndex:=ImageIndex;
        end;
    end;
end;

And the final result will look like this

the source code (Delphi 2007) is available on Github.