In an Inno install script, I am setting an environment variable by adding an entry to:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment.
I want my users to be able to run the newly installed app without having to reboot (which would normally be necessary for the above change to be seen in the environment.)
I plan to have the installer use a dll to call SendMessageTimeOut, as discussed here: Set environment variables from Delphi (Win32).
Delphi XE2 reports this API is deprecated.
And the above StackOverflow thread suggests using SendNotifyMessage to avoid long waits. I don't know how to construct that call.
Can anyone show me the syntax? Is it deprecated too?
Any suggestions on a better approach?
Tom
You might want to take a look at the ChangesEnvironment directive. From the docs:
When set to yes, at the end of the installation Setup will notify
other running applications (notably Windows Explorer) that they should
reload their environment variables from the registry.
Neither function is deprecated. Delphi says SendMessageTimeout is deprecated because that declaration is deprecated. The API function itself is fine. Since you'd be calling it from something that isn't Delphi, whatever Delphi says about its declaration is irrelevant to you.
Since you don't actually care about the return value of the message, SendNotifyMessage is the superior choice. It won't wait at all for a response, whereas SendMessageTimeout will wait a little while to get a response, which you're just going to ignore anyway.
But as Mirtheil's answer points out, the installer environment you're using already provides a way of notifying other programs that the environment changed, so you should use that instead of trying to do it manually.
Related
In this article it says: "The Dart VM reads and executes source code, which means there is no compile step between edit and run.". Does that mean that you can exchange source-code on the fly in a running Dart system like in Erlang? Maybe the compiler is removed from the runtime system and then this is no longer possible. So that's why I'm asking.
Dart is run "natively" only in Dartium, which is a flavour of Chrome with DartVM. When you develop an application you still need to compile it it to JavaScript. This way you get fast development lifecycle and in the end you can compile code to JS. Because it's compiled code there is lots more room for compiler to run optimisations on the code. So from my perspective, the compiler is still there and I don't think you would be able to replace code at runtime.
You can send around source code and run it, but it would need to be in a separate isolate. Isolates do have some relationship to Erlang concepts.
The Dart VM doesn't support hot swapping (Called live edit in V8). However, based on mailing list discussions, it sounds like this is something that the authors do want to support in the future.
However, as the others have mentioned, it is possible to dynamically load code into another isolate.
I am having some trouble updating UMDF drivers using "devcon" during a
standard code-deploy-debug cycle. The problem is that "devcon update" isn't
really updating anything unless the version number or the date of the DLL
file and the INF file has changed from what is stored in the system's driver
cache folder. After a maddening series of experiments I've discovered that
one way to force the thing to use the latest files is by doing the
following:
Change the parameters passed to
"stampinf.exe" in "makefile.inc" by
explicitly setting a version with
the "-v" option.
Modify the
resource script file ("DRIVER_NAME.rc") to first define
VER_USE_OTHER_MAJOR_MINOR_VER
before including "ntverp.h" and then
explicitly define
VER_PRODUCTMAJORVERSION and
VER_PRODUCTMINORVERSION. You'll
note that this system does not allow
us to change the build and the
revision numbers. On Win7 this
seems to be fixed at 7600 and 16385
in "ntverp.h". Is this by design?
So, I first modify "makefile.inc" and set the "-v" option to something like
"1.1.7600.16385" manually incrementing the minor version for every single
build and then modify the RC file and update VER_PRODUCTMINORVERSION with
the same number.
Alternatively, if I run a command prompt under the SYSTEM account and go and
delete the driver cache folder in
"C:\windows\system32\DriverStore\FileRepository\DRIVER FOLDER" before
running "devcon" then that works too.
Now, I am thinking I am missing something fairly basic here as this seems to
be a rather painful way of doing it. Please help! Thanks!
Why can't you just unplug the device and replace the unloaded DLL? You shouldn't need to reinstall the driver, just replace the module. Note that you shouldn't do this during production or anything that has to do with customers, but if you're writing a driver, just slam in the new module with the same version number.
On Win7 this seems to be fixed at 7600 and 16385 in "ntverp.h". Is this by design?
Yep, at least until the next service pack
As Paul Betts has suggested above, the way to go seems to be to simply replace the UMDF DLL directly in the driver folder (for e.g. c:\windows\system32\drivers\umdf\) after disabling the device either in the device manager or using "devcon". I'd asked this question on Microsoft's device drivers newsgroup before posting here but hadn't got a satisfactory response - but some folks ended up responding there after I posted here! So I'll put up a link to that post as well:
http://bit.ly/6PDxKT
I'm using TJvPluginManager in the JVCL to create and load BPL-based plugins for my program. Problem is, one of the plugins isn't loading properly, and I can't debug it. Every time I try to trace into the loading sequence, it gets as far as the LoadLibrary API call, and then the debugger seems to forget what it's there for. It completely loses the ability to associate program code with source lines, give meaningful data in a call stack, or display local variables. It will still stop at breakpoints, but it breaks to the CPU window, with all the inline source code stripped out.
This happens on Delphi 2007 and 2009, and it's driving me nuts. Does anyone know how to load a plugin without it breaking the debugger? Does anyone even know why it's breaking it in the first place?
NOTE: I'm not looking for alternative methods of debugging. I know all about tracing and logging and all the rest. What I want is to understand what's going wrong and how to fix it. Surely I'm not the only person who's ever used TJvPluginManager?
Not quite the answer to your question: Have you tried to debug the package project, by setting the host application and putting a breakpoint into the package's startup code?
I've found Ray Kanopka's (Raize) CodeSite to be invaluable for debugging in situations where the integrated debugger is acting up. Thinking about the things I want to monitor using CodeSite actually helps me focus on what's important - it enforces good habits.
Another alternative to Codesite is Overseer which is part of the nexus project, but stands alone so does not require you to use their framework. Codesite is by far the better option, but in a pinch Overseer would work just as well.
I found that using packages for plugins can be problematic and many years ago switched to a completely COM based implementation for plugins and never had any problems. The other advantage to COM based plugins, they don't require Delphi to write, do not need to be recompiled when the main app switches to a new version of the compiler (my plugins compiled with Delphi 5 still run fine against the main application compiled in Delphi 2009!) and they are easier to write test applications to assist in debugging.
The only side effect I notice, is that shared code ends up in both executables and the plugins require registration into the registry.
Hmmmm... This is a stupid question, but I have to ask: the initialization function have the EXACT declaration syntax like the other plugins that work ?(from your question, I deducted you made some others that work)
Check your dependencies. Make sure each unit is compiled into one package only. Whenever a package needs to reference a unit from another package, use the requires clause to do so. Watch for compiler warnings about implicitly linked units.
i have an application which call another console application and pass to it some parameters (console app is a video/audio coverter app) ... is there a way to programmatically "spy" or catch the passed paramters other than hooking/monitoring shellexecute/CreateThread etc ?
Create an executable yourself that just calls the original and passes all parameters on to it. Then move the original somewhere else and replace it with your exe. Your program can then log all calls to it, including all parameters.
Yes, there is - as you write Process Explorer is able to do it, and you could employ the same technique. But AFAIK there's no Delphi translation of the winternl.h file from the Platform SDK, so it is even more tedious and difficult. Also this is extremely version-specific, and there are chances it will break with the next Windows version. It's also not quite clear whether this works for 64 bit processes (from a 32 bit process).
If you really want to do it you will find the necessary information in this blog posting by Matt Pietrek, and in the CodeProject article "Read Environment Strings of Remote process".
If you do not plan to use it for closed source commercial programs then a look into the (GPL licensed) annotated version of the winternl.h file from the ReactOS project would probably also help.
It's a Win32 FAQ since 1992 : just read the PEB.
See on Win32 experts group.
I'm having an interesting problem implementing a global keyboard hook.
I wrote a dll which is used to set the hook and then an application (Delphi) which loads the dll and processes the results of the hook. This was done this afternoon on my PC at work and after some testing I figured it was working 100%.
I've just tested the same app and dll here at home and I'm not getting any errors, but the application does not appear to be getting any data either.
Both machines are WinXP, although my work machine is SP2 and this one is SP3.
Has there been some change in the Win32 API which would cause this to malfunction, or could the problem be related to some A/V / Spyware / MS Update that has been released recently?
I'm hoping somebody here will know of an obvious reason that this may happen before I spend hours debugging.
Thanks!
Actually some A/Vs don't like homemade hooks. I've got the same problem with my mouse hooker on some machines, and it doesn't depend on service pack version.
Yeah, I could. I haven't installed Delphi on this machine, but I think I might have to. I'm going for the low hanging fruit here. If there's an obvious answer, there's no need to go through all the trouble of debugging and hoping to find what might be the problem.
My first suspicion is that there's been a change in the API somewhere.
As I mentioned, this app works absolutely perfectly on my work machine.
Do you have a debugger on your home computer? Do you receive any messages via the hook at all?
Can it be that some other application is hooking, and don't pass the message on down the hook-chain?
BTW: I love virtual machines for this kind of testing. Keep a clean XP install. Install SP2, and test your application. Roll back to clean install again, and install SP3. Try your application again. This way you will know if its SP3, since there is nothing else to mess things up. I like to keep a set of snapshots around with different configurations.
Which kind of hook are you using? I once used the WH_CBT-type and encountered problems when certain other applications where running. One case I could trace back to Trillian, which seems to do also some kind of hooking (and maybe screws up).
Apart from that I am currently working on an application that uses the WH_KEYBOARD-hook and this works on SP2 and SP3 equally well. The MSDN also doesn't mention any service-pack related changes.
What you can do to trace the bug on your home machine:
make sure to check all result values of all system api calls (and use GetLastError in case of error)
provide some kind of debug output in case of error (e.g. as message box or to a text file)
optional: log some status messages so you know whats going on internally
One alternative is to use a low level keyboardhook. (Just a different param to SetWindowsHookEx). The hook is processed in the message loop of the registering thread, and thus does not need to inject a dll everywhere. And for some odd reason VirusScanners/Firewalls interfere much less with it. They often silently block dllinjection or normal keyboardhooks. Also removes the need to share the hHook across processes if you want it to work in older windows versions.
And if you abuse a keyboardhook to implement global hotkeys(Have seen that a lot) use RegisterHotkey/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646309.aspx) instead.