The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows Development’ Category

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Sparkle and WinSparkle – frameworks to update your applications on Apple Mac OS X / MacOS and Windows.

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/10/29

Since I will need these one day as native apps are useful:

via: [WayBack] Looking for ideas how to display to the users that ‘New version is available’ info… – Mike Torrettinni – Google+ which also has some good tips on how to notify the user about the availability of new updates.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Terminate threads during application or not?

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/10/02

I got an interesting question a while ago: should an application terminate (anonymous) threads or not?

A problem is that a thread might not execute unless you call WaitFor before Terminate is called. The reason is that the internal function ThreadProc does not start Execute if the thread is already terminated.

The ThreadProc in the System.Classes unit is an ideal place to set breakpoints in order to see which threads might start.

Other useful places to set breakpoints:

  • TAnonymousThread.Execute
  • TExternalThread.Execute

Execute not being called by ThreadProc is a bug, but it is not documented because QC is gone (taking the below entry with it), it is not in QP and the docwiki never got updated.

Given QC has so much information, I am still baffled that Embarcadero took it down.

Sergey Kasandrov (a.k.a. serg or sergworks) wrote in [WayBack] Sleep sort and TThread corner case | The Programming Works about this bug and refers to WayBack: QualityCentral 35451 – TThread implementation doesn’t guarantee that thread’s Execute method will be called at all .

The really bad thing are the WayBack: QualityCentral Resolution Entries for Report #35451 Resolution “As Designed” implying the design is wrong.

In his post, sergworks implemented the Sleep sorting in Delphi. Related:

Note that application shutdown is a much debated topic. Best is to do as little cleanup as possible: your process is going to terminate soon anyway. No need to close handles or free memory: Windows will do that for you anyway. See for instance:

 

Related to waiting:

Related to executing:

–jeroen

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Delphi, Development, Event, Multi-Threading / Concurrency, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Using Image Encoders and Decoders in Managed GDI+ | Microsoft Docs

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/09/17

I forgot who pointed me to this, but it will be useful the next time I need to do image export/import in .NET or GDI+ [WayBack] Using Image Encoders and Decoders in Managed GDI+ | Microsoft Docs.

GDI+ has built-in encoders and decoders that support the following file types:

  • BMP
  • GIF
  • JPEG
  • PNG
  • TIFF

GDI+ also has built-in decoders that support the following file types:

  • WMF
  • EMF
  • ICON

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

When an installer errors out with “Please re-run this installer as a normal user instead of”…

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/12

Via [WayBack] Anyone with a hint on how to work around this: … “Please re-run this installer as a normal user instead of”… – Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+

This happened for instance when trying to install Source Tree 2.x on Windows (1.9.x works fine):

[Window Title]
SourceTreeSetup-2.3.1.0.exe

[Main Instruction]
Installation has failed

[Content]
Please re-run this installer as a normal user instead of “Run as Administrator”.

[Close]

The problem was by accident the machine got in a state to run commands without UAC approval, so the run dialog would already look have “This task will be created with administrative privileges”:

It was odd, as the machine didn’t have it enabled in the security policy (secpo.msc):

So I did a bit more digging, bumped into [WayBack] Why does my Run dialog say that tasks will created with administrative privileges? – The Old New Thing and had one of those #facepalm moments: Explorer had crashed, and I had started it from Process Explorer, forgetting Process Explorer had an UAC token.

The solution is easy:

  1. Logoff / Logon
  2. Verify the Windows-R shows a “normal” run:

Then you can just run the installer:

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Console (command prompt window), Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Using PE Flags in Delphi – twm’s blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/08/08

For my link archive: [WayBack] Using PE Flags in Delphi – twm’s blog with information about and links to:

The flags themselves are documented at [WayBack] IMAGE_FILE_HEADER structure (Windows)

–jeroen

Via: [WayBack] There was a discussion about using the PE flag IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE… – Thomas Mueller (dummzeuch) – Google+

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

A COM Object Collection (IEnumVARIANT) – Delphi Tips – CJC Delphi (Cool Delphi Tips)

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/07/04

Summary of [WayBack] A COM Object Collection (IEnumVARIANT) – Delphi Tips – CJC Delphi (Cool Delphi Tips)

Question: How to implements object collection that support Visual Basic’s For Each construct ?

Answer:
In order to implements an object collection your object has to return  IEnumVariant pointer from a special property named _NewEnum.

Via: [WayBack] What interface to I need to implement to allow ForEach in VBA on a COM object written in delphi? – Stack Overflow

–jeroen

Posted in COM/DCOM/COM+, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Detecting if a debugger is present is different from detecting if an IDE is present.

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/04

I have seen this happen in various environments: people wanting to detect if their debugger is present, but trying to detect their IDE, or vice versa.

Similar reasoning is for detecting for being running on a console, or your project having been built to run on a console.

People use these decisions, for instance to determine if their application should behave as a service, or as a regular process.

Ways to determine the various permutation points:

  • Running inside a debugger: use the [WayBack] IsDebuggerPresent function (which can be true, even if Delphi DebugHook stays zero).
  • Check for the IDE: tricky; as IDEs have different behaviour over time. For Delphi, check for any TAppBuilder Window class with the [WayBack] FindWindow function.
  • Compiled for console: for Delphi check IsConsole, for .NET I could not find good information.
  • Running on a console: check if you can allocate a handle to stdout
  • Running as a service: check the hosting assembly or hosting process

Related links:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

sorting – Is there a Windows equivalent to the Unix uniq? – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/03/08

TL;DR:

  • Windows 10 has an undocumented /unique switch for sort
  • git for Windows ships with uniq (in a default x64 install, it is at C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\uniq.exe)

From [WayBack] sorting – Is there a Windows equivalent to the Unix uniq? – Super User

This works fine:

dir /s /b *0*.pas *1*.pas *2*.pas *3*.pas *4*.pas *5*.pas *6*.pas *7*.pas*8*.pas *9*.pas | sort /unique > pas-files-with-numeric-names.txt

I need remove duplicate lines from a text file, it is simple in Linux usingcat file.txt |sort | uniqwhen file.txt containsaaabbbaaacccIt will output aaabbbcccIs there a Windows

 

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Breaking in the Delphi debugger without a breakpoint

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/02/20

You can fire a debugger breakpoint using either of these two:

  • asm int 3 end which is the x86 debug interrupt
  • DebugBreak() which is the Windows API function wrapping the above interrupt

I’m not sure how accurate it is (in the past it would fail under some debuggers other than the Delphi IDE), but as of Delphi 2, there is a DebugHook variable that is non-zero when running under the Delphi debugger, so you can protect your code.

Via [WayBack] I remember some time ago, Jeroen Pluijmers posted a snippet of how to place a breakpoint directly in the Delphi source without relying on the F5 key. – Alberto Paganini – Google+

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

A 90-byte “whereis” program – The Old New Thing

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/11/23

I needed a “get only the first result” of WHERE (which is present after Windows 2000, so XP, Server 2003 and up), so based on [WayBack] A 90-byte “whereis” program – The Old New Thing I came up with this:

@echo off
:: based on https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050120-00/?p=36653
::for %%f in (%1) do @echo.%%~$PATH:f
for %%e in (%PATHEXT%) do @for %%i in (%1 %~n1%%e) do (
  @if NOT "%%~$PATH:i"=="" (
    echo %%~$PATH:i
    goto :eof
  )
)
:: note: WHERE lists all occurrences of a file on the PATH in PATH order
goto :eof

Two changes:

  • it takes into account the extension if you specify it (unlike WHERE.EXE)
  • it bails out at the first match (like WHERE.EXE)

References:

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

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