I have a small console app. I want to hide its window when it is called from my main program (with -hide as command line parameter) and show it when the user starts it (no command line param).
This question suggests that using {$APPTYPE GUI} instead of {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} will hide the window. And indeed it works. But how do I make the window visible when ran by user?
Purpose: I want my main program to interact with the console app silently in the background (console is invisible). So, when the user starts the console app alone, I just want to give him a warning: 'This console app is doing x task. You cannot start it manually'.
Leave the program alone, as a console application. Do not make it into a GUI application because that means that when users start it directly, it will not be given a console.
When you start the program from your main app, use CreateProcess to do so, passing the CREATE_NO_WINDOW flag. That flag ensures that no console window will be created.
Related
I have a Windows console app created with Embarcadero XE 6 (in fact converted from a Borland C++Builder5 project). It has a single form with a few buttons and edit controls. All these controls have set TabStop=True and appropriate TabOrder's. However, pressing Tab in runtime when the form is shown does not do anything (it just produces a sound when a cursor/focus is in an Edit control and does nothing when a button is focused).
I have read in docs that Tab order would not work unless the Parent of the form is set. However, this is the only VCL form (the other windows are the console and the GLUT window), so there is no VCL parent AFAIK. I tried to set
Parent=Application->MainForm;
in the Form's constructor, but the Application->MainForm is also NULL. Any ideas?
Your problem is that you don't have a message loop. This is because console applications are not expected to have windows and do not come with message loops by default.
You can run a message loop by calling:
Application->Run();
However this will probably stop the console part of your application from working properly. How can your main thread service the console synchronously and the asynchronous GUI message loop at the same time?
I suspect you will need to have a more serious re-think of your application design.
Regarding your update, it seems that you do have a message loop, but it is the message loop for the GLUT framework. The VCL framework requires its message loop to handle dialog messages like TAB key presses.
It's plausible that running the VCL message loop in place of the GLUT message loop would give better results. But it's quite likely that would just break the GLUT part of the app.
Trying to run two incompatible GUI frameworks out of a single message loop is hard to get right. There's probably no quick fix here. You'll need to dig deeper. Perhaps it would be best to give up on the VCL and stick to the one GUI framework.
Is it possible to force stop a .wlua file? I figured that I would have to use the Lua Command Line to do this, but I can't seem to find out how to stop them.
If it's possible, how can it be done?
Because wlua.exe doesn't open the console window (that's the purpose) and you can't send Ctrl-C, the only way to terminate such application is to use Processes window in Task Manager. Note, however, that the process name will be wlua.exe for every file opened that way.
Of course, it's meant only to be used when the application isn't responding. Your GUI application should provide a way to close it, such as close button, listening for ESC key etc.
How to run a console application from a standard Delphi form application, but to run it hidden? Also i want to write commands in that console application from my form application.
How can i do those things?
And a personal request for the people who have the newest version of indy10. I have trouble to compile the console application and if is possible some of you to compile it for me and give me link to download. Please, that will be nice if you do me that favor. :)
To run a console app and hide the console window, call CreateProcess passing CREATE_NO_WINDOW in the creation flags parameter.
I've got a console application that crashes with an I/O error 6 when the output is redirected to a file. It probably has something to do with the fact that the console application changes the text color, which doesn't make much sense in a file.
This works: c:\dir\app.exe
This crashes: c:\dir\app.exe >out.txt
When I supply >out.txt as a parameter in the IDE (run\parameters\parameters\), I just get >out.txt as a parameter.
How can I debug the application with the stdout redirected to a file instead of the console?
Redirection is made by the command line interpreter, in windows it is cmd.exe
To debug the application, just launch a cmd.exe with propers arguments to launch your application and redirect the output, for example:
cmd.exe /c "yourapplication.exe >redirect.txt"
To make this happen from inside IDE in order to debug, configure cmd.exe as the host application (Run/Parameters):
Put a breakpoint where you want to stop, and launch a new cmd.exe (Project/Load process) with "Run to first source" after load action:
And you're done... the debugger must stop the application at your breakpoint.
You could try remote debugging:
at the beginning of the application, add a ReadLn; which gives you time to attach to the process from within Delphi
start the application from a command line (specifying the >out.txt parameter)
in Delphi, connect with the app process (Run | Attach to Process...), set a breakpoint and then switch to the application to enter a key
Hint: a debugger breakpoint can also be set in code:
asm
int 3
end;
Make sure it isn't failing due to directory permissions. Fully-qualify the output file path to somewhere that you're guaranteed to be able to write. Otherwise, Windows7 may be playing games with the directory. (VirtualStore stuff).
This question already has answers here:
Can one executable be both a console and GUI application?
(9 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
Is it possible to (and if so, how do I) make a single program work both as a console application and a GUI version using Delphi 2007?
What I am after is that if the program is run with the appropriate command-line options, it should function as a console program, printing output to the console using WRITELN, but if no command line arguments are given it should run as a normal Delphi GUI application?
The catch is that when running as a console application, the command line interpreter waits for the application to terminate before allowing you to enter a new command, whereas a GUI application started from the command line immediately returns you to the command line and the GUI application is started in a detached process. I want this behaviour retained.
I don't mind something like this:
IF GUI THEN StartApplicationAsGUI(ParamStr(0))
ie. I don't mind that I'll have to restart the application using some form of EXECUTE call to start it in GUI mode if needed, as long as the command line interface returns to the command line input when the GUI version is started.
I'd prefer a solution/suggestion that is along the lines of:
<Parse Comnand Line>
IF ConsoleMode THEN
RunConsole(Parameters)
ELSE BEGIN
Application.Initialize;
Application.CreateForm(...)
Application.Run;
END
(or vice-versa, ie. doing things a special way if GUI mode)
so that I can still use Delphi's IDE and VCL when making the GUI interface...
On Windows this is a little bit tricky. Actually the distinction between a console application and a GUI one is a single flag in the PE header. You can easily write console applications that create windows but that way you always have the console window around (you could hide it, though, but that wouldn't be nice when people run your program from cmd).
You can, however write a GUI application that creates a console if it needs to, using the AllocConsole function:
A process can be associated with only one console, so the AllocConsole function fails if the calling process already has a console. A process can use the FreeConsole function to detach itself from its current console, then it can call AllocConsole to create a new console or AttachConsole to attach to another console.
If the calling process creates a child process, the child inherits the new console.
AllocConsole initializes standard input, standard output, and standard error handles for the new console. The standard input handle is a handle to the console's input buffer, and the standard output and standard error handles are handles to the console's screen buffer. To retrieve these handles, use the GetStdHandle function.
This function is primarily used by graphical user interface (GUI) application to create a console window. GUI applications are initialized without a console. Console applications are initialized with a console, unless they are created as detached processes (by calling the CreateProcess function with the DETACHED_PROCESS flag).
However, when run from cmd this will likely cause another console window to appear instead of re-using the existing one. I don't know whether a good solution exists there.
IMO, the best approach here is to have non-visual classes that actually do the work of the program. Then you can call that from a GUI program, and you can also call it from a separate command line program. Both programs are just wrappers around the functionality of your class(es).
This forces the design to be clean too - your classes necessarily are separated from the GUI layer of your application.
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/01/9259142.aspx
Windows has different values in executable's header for console and UI application (see more details here). So it seems to be impossible to make the same executable to work in both modes.
As an alternative, you can open a console in you UI app, but it will be new console, not the one you've started app from.
AttachConsole() may be used to get a hold of the parents console.
E.g. if the application is started from a cmdline shell, AllocConsole() can be avoided:
if not AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS)
then AllocConsole;
More info here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681952(v=vs.85).aspx