youtube-dl fails to update on Windows if cwd != youtube-dl.exe

[phihag]

Reported by @AGSPhoenix:

ERROR: no write permissions on youtube-dl
I have youtube-dl.exe in my %PATH% so I can run it anywhere
if I run the update in the same directory as the executable it works
anywhere else and it borks

[arpitchauhan]

Yes. It happens with me too.

[henrik-jensen]

Just a note to those debugging the problem.
In addition to navigating to the folder of the exe, you can also mitigate the problem by using the full path of the executable when running from a different folder. It's just when youtube-dl.exe is found through the path the error occurs on my system.

[mikhaelkh]

I thought of a temporary solution for Windows: create a youtube-dl-U.cmd in the same directory as youtube-dl.exe in PATH with this text:

@echo off
pushd "%~dp0"
cmd /c youtube-dl.exe -U >nul 2>&1
popd

[ghost]

Still not working, added to PATH C:\cmds\youtube-dl.exe

[Starbuck2010]

The 2015.11.15 released always failed if started with 2015.11.13 (youtube-dl.exe.new is complete but not renamed). The workaround is to download manually the 2015.11.15 (guess I already saw it in other issues) or to fall-back to a previous version you may have and run -U again (2015.11.10 complete successfully the -U).