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The company I work for developed an application that uses WebView2 to display a Edge browser within the app. The IDE we use (Delphi) provides a dll called "WebView2Loader.dll" to distribute along side the exe.

When looking at how the WebView2 runtime operates, there are a lot of mentions of something called "Evergreen" which seems to be the WebView2 runtime that auto updates itself to the latest and greatest. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/concepts/distribution#understand-the-webview2-runtime-and-installer-preview

This is where the confusion came in. My question is how does this Evergreen relate to the WebView2Loader.dll? The way I think it works is that the loader dll is only there to find the installed WebView2 runtime and the Evergreen is actually doing the downloading of the runtime. I get this indication from this quote "WebView2Loader.dll is a small component that helps apps locate the WebView2 Runtime, or non-stable channels of Microsoft Edge, on the device." from this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/how-to/static.

And then my follow up question would be, would customers have to download Evergreen manually or would that runtime exist if they have edge installed already?

Matt
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1 Answers1

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WebView2Loader.dll is a dynamic library wraps around WebView2 Runtime and allows Delphi applications to make use of its functionality.

WebView2 Runtime is a standalone runtime package that allows applications to use WebView2 environment without Microsoft Edge being installed on the target computer.

WebView2 Runtime can be distributed in two modes.

  1. Evergreen mode installs the WebView2 package as a system component similar to C++ Runtime packages. It is installed once and can then be used from any application. It is also capable of updating itself.
  2. In Fixed version mode you distribute the needed binaries with your application. Such binaries are generally available just to your application. And if multiple applications are installed each ship with their own binaries so it uses more disk space.
SilverWarior
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