Embarcadero has released the Update 1 of Delphi XE, C++Builder XE, and RAD Studio XE. Here are the links to the Release Notes (Readme) and List of Quality Central bugs fixed (which is not a complete list of fixes, as it doesn't include internally reported bugs).

The update itself should be in the RAD Studio Registered Users Updates page, but it is not there yet. So how do you get it? I'd suggest a direct download (again, only for registered users, after they log in) from the Code Central site at http://cc.embarcadero.com/item/28116. Since under Windows 7 (with UAC enabled) the automatic "check for updates" as you run the RAD Studio IDE is broken, I tried (as suggested in the release notes) manually activating the "Check for Updates" entry in the RAD Studio program group. This run and found the updates, as you can see below, but continuing it ended up in some limbo: the user interface disappeared and while the program kept running it seemed to get no where. I feared it might have be waiting for some input or UAC permission... but with no user interface it was hard to tell. I might have waited more time, but decided to stop it after some time (The reason it didn't actually work is detailed later). RAD Studio installation and updates are clearly still not very UAC-friendly. 

So back to the standard approach. The full download of the update was very fast (despite the size of 159 MB or 167,293,101 bytes). I extracted the ZIP file content and was suggested to do three installs:

  • The Update1/Updates1.exe updates the IDE and almost everything else, going to the standard InstallAware installer (see image below).
  • The BoostUpdate/boost_setup.exe updates this specific C++ library (also taking some time)
  • The HelpUpdate/Help_Setup.exe will install an updated help file (which is not included, as it is downloaded during the install process).

The overall installation process took quite some time. The main Delphi / RAD Studio Update took me about half an hour to set up, which I found quite annoying. Here is the initial screen (with no hint to the fact this is an update):

I tried it, and it crashed (after more than 20 minutes). Tried again, no luck. Rebooted (because of the previous setup errors, so some files might have remained blocked) and tried again, with no luck. I invariably got this error message:

I checked and the file was there, but in fact I could not even copy it, as explorer would report an error. File corruption (which is bad). I replaced it with a new version, and the next time the installer went through, slowly but smoothly. Now I have Delphi XE Update 1 on my computer:

Certainly there is room for improvement from Embarcadero. The install process got much better over the last few versions, but installing updates is still slow and error-prone. (There are also reported incompatibilities with DDevExtensions) There are quite a few "nice" bugs fixed, so I guess it is worth to spend the time to Upgrade your installation of Delphi or RAD Studio XE.

I'll work with the Update over the next few days (and give my sessions at ITDevCon) and let you know which extra bug fixes I notice.