I want to display the version on the installation dialog pages of nsis, by reading the version from a text file, but i have to copy this on the destination pc where the executable is run, but i want that the text file is not copied on the user's pc but is only read from,
that is,
i want to include this file into the exe, and read text from it to display on the nsis dialog pages, but not copy it anywhere on the pc wherever the exe is run?
is this possible? or is there any other way of doing this?
In general, you can use $PLUGINSDIR constant. It is de-facto temporary directory on target system and you can put there something and use. Following code will copy the file into the temporary directory on the target machine, but whole directory will be deleted after the installation completion. (InitPluginsDir is needed somewhere before)
InitPluginsDir
File /oname=$PLUGINSDIR\blah.txt "..\myfile.txt"
But in your case, it could be better to solve it in some other way. You can define some constant containing version number and use it in the code, can't you? The !define command could be in generated file so you can automate it...
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I am writing a program using WinForms in C# which monitors my drive file stream files, and copies the files to a local directory, where the files can then be run locally off of the computer.
My issue I am having is that when I alter or replace the files in the drive file stream either through the desktop app or the browser, it will rename some files to add an additional (1) at the end of the name. This then messes with the files when I need to run them from the local directory on my computer, as it cannot locate these specific files anymore.
Does anyone have a solution for this? Thanks.
I am mounting a folder as a virtual drive and i want to run a .exe file everytime user opens any file present in that folder. To be precise the folder would contain dummy files present on some other machine. By dummy files i mean the file would be listed but it would be a empty file. Whenever user opens a file i want the .exe program to download that file from another machine and display it to user.
That functionality (remote access on demand) can be implemented using reparse points and file system filters.
You could
use hooks to rewrite the jump address of OpenFile and in the
detour function check for the handle type, retrieve it's info by
using GetFileInformationByHandleEx, parse the data, download
what you need, open the downloaded file and then return
STATUS_SUCCESS or any appropriate error status in case one occurs.
Note
this is a bit more complicated as you also need a auto-inject
mechanism to inject function/library into each process according to
it's architecture.
this is not a safe procedure as most AV's will most likely consider your code malware.
I have a program which reads GetPrivateProfileString from a file ".\abcd.ini" - i.e. it will look for the ini file in the current directory.
If it does not find the ini file, it has a default value set in the 3rd parameter to GetPrivateProfileString.
I have an installer which installs the program to c:\program files (x86)\abcd\client directory.
Initially, the installer also installed an abcd.ini file in the same directory with a particular profile string key/value pair. Post that, I changed the installer to not install any ini file.
However, the program continued taking the value from the old ini file which I had shipped even if it didn't exist in that directory.
After doing a system wide search I found a copy of abcd.ini in c:\Users\myusername\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\abcd\Client
Once I deleted this, the program worked correctly (as if there is no ini file).
Googling it seems that the virtualstore is used because myuser does not have full permissions for c:\program files (x86). However, the program itself doesn't write to the ini file, it only reads from it.
Is this actually how it's supposed to be? Why is the ini file copied to AppData & why does the program read from there if there is no local copy?
I am on Windows 10 64 bit.
The diagnostic is that the EXE program does not contain a manifest that declares itself compatible with UAC. Not unusual for the kind of app that still uses GetPrivateProfileString().
Is this actually how it's supposed to be?
Yes, this the way modern versions of Windows (major version >= 6, Vista and up) deal with legacy programs that assume the user always has admin privileges. Redirecting the file access to the VirtualStore directory ensures that the missing access rights to Program Files directory does not cause trouble.
it only reads from it
The OS does not have a time machine to guess whether you might write to the file and did so in a previous session. So it has to check the VirtualStore directory first. To find that .ini file.
It is also important to not assume that it was your program that got the .ini file in that directory. It could have been done by another ancient program, like a text editor. Or a previous version of your program. Or the installer you use.
Yes, because the program would crash, so Windows redirects the program to the VirtualStore directory.
I am writing a script using Null Script which install around 6000 files in INSTALLDIR i.e. C:\ABC folder.
I have done this using
File /r "ABC"
in install section.
It is just a simple extractor (no registry entries and no uninstall.exe created during install).
Now, if I run the same exe again then I want my exe to display a message box to the user while overwriting the files containing the options
Yes,
Yes too all, or
exit the installer
i.e. How WinZip software does while extracting the same zip file in the same location multiple times.
If I set the SetOverwrite value to off then during install (2nd time) my EXE just skips the file installation without notifying the user. Also using IFFILEEXIST I can check a single file or *.* files but cannot do one to one mapping.
Please suggest how can I implement this. If this question is already posted then please send me the link.
Thanks in advance.
It is not possible to get this behavior in NSIS when using File /r. You might be able to pull off something similar by generating the file list at compile time by executing a batch file with !system and then check if each file exists and maybe delete the old one at run-time but you are not going to get the dialog without a custom plugin. NSIS itself only supports basic Abort/Retry/Cancel and Yes/No dialogs.
If you only want to use free tools, why not just use 7-Zip to create a self extracting archive?
I was wondering how to:
create a droplet that saves to a relative filepath.
let's say the droplet is on the desktop in the folder "batches" and this folder also contains the folder "output". Everything that gets dropped will end up in the output folder.
I've noticed that photoshop saves a fixed path to this folder. This renders the droplet useless on any other computer than my own.
Even further pondering:
Is it remotely possible to let photoshop prompt the user once for a destination. This could also be an acceptable solution to the above.
Thanks in advance for any comments,tips,remarks,etc.
T
In my experience, the best and simplest way to handle this is to make a working copy of the files you want to transform. Then when creating the droplet, choose "Save and Close" to overwrite the source files.
The danger of this method is that the user will overwrite source files. However, this can be remedied by creating a script or Automator action around the photoshop droplet. It would first copy the files to the destination, then run the droplet.