While playing Deus Ex

Random observation of the day:
All Deus Ex bosses can be killed with the stun gun only.

Namir takes 15 shots. Make sure to always move behind him while he is stunned.

Problem with CodeSourcery tools: arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc: No such file or directory

Having installed the ARM tools TAR package from CodeSourcery on a Ubuntu 11.04 (GNU/Linux 2.6.38-8-server x86_64) running in VirtualBox I encountered this error:

root@armkernel:~# arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc
-bash: /root/gcc/arm-2011.03/bin/arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc: No such file or directory

Unfortunately searching online delivers lots of advice on how to set your PATH variable, but no actual solution.

Except for this post. So in the name of increasing that post's relevance rating I am linking to it here…

The fix for the problem is to install the ia32-libs package:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Copy a file's name to the clipboard from the context menu

Motivation

Often I need to mix between the regular explorer style file system navigation and various command line tools. For that purpose it is convenient to be able to get a file's name into the clipboard through an option in the explorer context menu of the particular file. Unfortunately the obvious echo "%1"|clip doesn't seem to use unicode charsets.

Solution

A small .Net tool will do the trick:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Threading;

public class string2cb
{
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Clipboard.SetText(args[0]);
    }
}

If you put the above code into a file called string2cb.cs you can compile it into an .exe file using the C# compiler that comes included with your .Net Framework:

%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\csc.exe string2cb.cs

Using the context menu from the previous post you can add the new function as follows:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\020string2cb]
"MUIVerb"="Full path to clipboard"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\020string2cb\command]
@="C:\PathToMyusefultoys\string2cb.exe \"%1\""

Obviously you have to replace C:\PathToMyusefultoys\string2cb.exe with the path to the “install”-location of the compiled .exe file.

Cascading context menus via static registry entries and ExtendedSubCommandsKey in Windows 7

The Problem

If you have been looking for a way to add cascading menus to the Windows 7 Explorer using static registry entries you may have found this article on MSDN. It is either too obscure to understand or wrong, or both, at least in the version dated 5/3/2011.

The description below was derived from looking at what registry accesses Explorer performs when you open a context menu (using MS / Sysinternals Process Explorer).

The Solution

First you create an “anchor” entry that will be added to the context menu:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\myusefultools_anchor]
"MUIVerb"="My Useful Tools"
"ExtendedSubCommandsKey"="*\\ContextMenus\\myusefultools"

If ExtendedSubCommandsKey is set to “foo\bar” then Explorer will look for the key “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\foo\bar\Shell”. Under that key it expects one subkey for each entry, e.g. (using the above value for ExtendedSubCommandsKey):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\001cmdhere]
"MUIVerb"="Open CMD here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\001cmdhere\command]
@="cmd.exe"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\010morecmd]
"MUIVerb"="Another Command"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\010morecmd\command]
@="cmd.exe"

Random stuff

Add "Position"="Bottom" to the anchor entry if you want it to show up at the bottom of the context menu.

The submenu entries are sorted according to the name of their registry key. I added 0XX to the names to force a specific order. As described in the MSDN article the CommandFlags value can be added (using the codes listed here) to customize the menu entries and create separators.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\ContextMenus\myusefultools\Shell\005separator]
"CommandFlags"=dword:00000008