VDrive is a lightweight, high-performance Delphi library that empowers your applications with their own private, fully virtualized filesystem — entirely in-memory, with no drivers, no installers, and no filesystem footprint. 🛡️

It exposes a simple and intuitive API:

function vdPath(const AFilename: string): string;

Given any filename, vdPath returns a special virtual drive path where you can seamlessly create, read, write, and manage files and folders as if they existed on the real disk.
Files written to this virtual drive persist for the lifetime of your application and are completely invisible to the underlying operating system. 🧩

When your application terminates, the entire virtual filesystem is automatically destroyed, leaving no traces behind. 🧹

🎯 What You Can Do with VDrive

• 📦 Package and load DLLs and assets hidden inside your EXE, without ever writing to disk.
• 📄 Create and manage temporary files, cache files, logs, and configuration data entirely in memory.
• 🔧 Access your virtual drive using standard Delphi file I/O APIs (TFile, TStream, AssignFile, etc.).
• 🔐 Secure your runtime resources from tampering, antivirus false positives, and prying eyes.
• 🧹 Eliminate filesystem clutter — no need to extract files or clean up temporary folders.

Anything you can do with the OS filesystem, you can do inside your app's private virtual drive. 🚀

✨ Key Features

• Simple API — One function (vdPath) to access your virtual drive.
• Fully In-Memory — Files never touch the physical disk.
• Standard Compatibility — Works transparently with existing Delphi file handling routines.
• Secure & Hidden — Protects your embedded resources and runtime data.
• Zero External Dependencies — Pure native Delphi, no third-party libraries.
• Tiny Footprint — Minimal overhead, blazing fast performance.
• Automatic Cleanup — Virtual filesystem vanishes when your app exits.
• User-Mode Only — No drivers, no admin rights, no OS modifications.

🔥 Example: Loading a DLL from a TResourceStream into VDrive

uses
  System.Classes, System.SysUtils, System.IOUtils, Winapi.Windows, VDrive;

procedure LoadDllFromResource;
var
  LResStream: TResourceStream;
  LPath: string;
begin
  // Generate a virtual path for the DLL
  LPath := vdPath('myhidden.dll');

  // Load the DLL from an embedded resource into the virtual drive
  LResStream := TResourceStream.Create(HInstance, 'MYDLL', RT_RCDATA);
  try
    LResStream.SaveToFile(LPath);
  finally
    LResStream.Free;
  end;

  // Load the DLL at runtime, directly from the virtual drive
  if LoadLibrary(PChar(LPath)) = 0 then
    RaiseLastOSError;
end;

💡 In this example, the DLL is embedded inside your application as a resource (MYDLL), saved virtually to VDrive, and loaded without ever touching disk storage.

🛠️ Why Use VDrive?

🧩 Challenge	🚀 VDrive Solution
Need to extract temporary files securely	Store them in your private virtual drive
Want to ship runtime DLLs/assets without exposing them	Embed and load them invisibly in memory
Tired of cleaning up temp folders	Let VDrive auto-clean when your app closes
Risk of antivirus false positives from temp file writes	Eliminate disk I/O entirely
Need easy integration into existing code	Works seamlessly with standard file operations

💼 Typical Use Cases

• 📦 Embedding and loading DLLs or plugins without filesystem exposure
• 🚀 Building self-contained apps with in-memory assets
• 🔒 Securely managing temporary data and runtime configuration
• 🧳 Building portable applications that leave no traces behind
• ⚡ Improving startup performance by avoiding disk I/O

🚧️ This repository is currently under construction.

VDrive is actively being developed. Features, APIs, and internal structure are subject to change.

Contributions, feedback, and issue reports are welcome as the project evolves.

🛠️ Support and Resources

• 🐞 Report issues via the Issue Tracker.
• 💬 Engage in discussions on the Forum and Discord.
• 📚 Learn more at Learn Delphi.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions to ✨ VDrive are highly encouraged! 🌟

• 🐛 Report Issues: Submit issues if you encounter bugs or need help.
• 💡 Suggest Features: Share your ideas to make VDrive even better.
• 🔧 Create Pull Requests: Help expand the capabilities and robustness of the library.

Your contributions make a difference! 🙌✨

Contributors 👥🤝

📜 Licensing

VDrive is distributed under the 🆓 BSD-3-Clause License, allowing for redistribution and use in both source and binary forms, with or without modification, under specific conditions.
See the 📜 LICENSE file for more details.

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🚀 Take full control of your Delphi app’s resources with VDrive — Clean. Secure. Invisible. Fast.

Made with ❤️ in Delphi