GitExtensions ContextMenuHandlers

Here is a thread about duplicated menu entries in GitExtensions Explorer handlers.

Move User Profile Folder

I had to move my user profile folder to another drive (because I could'nt wait for gparted to move my data). I am using Windows 7 Professionnal (in French). Context :

• Moved profile : ded
• Current (old) profile path : c:\Users\ded
• Future (new) profile path : D:\ded

Here is what I did :

• Create an(other) admin account (for example: root)
• Close current ded session
• Create d:\ded
• Fix d:\ded ACL (you would need to uncheck include parent security)

My profile folder security is :

• Administrators : Full Control, recursively
• System : Full Control, recursively
• ded : Full Control, recursively
• root : Full Control, recursively
• HomeUsers : see below

(It seems that root what added automatically under the hood)

HomeUsers permissions are :

• Traverse folder / execute file
• List folder / read data
• Read attributes
• Read extended attributes
• Read permissions

HomeUsers permissions only apply to this folder only (not sub-folders nor files). French translation :

• Parcours du dossier/exécuter le fichier
• Liste du dossier/lecture des données
• Attributs de lecture
• Lecture des attributs étendus
• Autorisations de lecture

Let's continue :

• Copy all files with robocopy (keep permissions, etc.)

robocopy c:\users\ded d:\ded /e /copyall /sl /xj /np /nfl /r:1

• Restart robocopy to find what failed

robocopy c:\Users\ded d:\ded /e /copyall /sl /xj /np /nfl /ndl /r:1 /w:1 /x

In my case I only had problems with :

• junctions (not handled by robocopy)
• Some tmp files (ignored)
• Cardspace files (access denied!)
• Google drive folder (denied)

To find junctions run :

dir c:\users\%username% /al /s

I used the following script to create junctions in my new profile folder. *BEWARE !* This script is for a French O/S.

@echo off
:: é = ‚
:: è = Š
setlocal
set new_home=d:\%username%
call :mk_junction "Application Data" "AppData\Roaming"
call :mk_junction "Cookies" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies"
call :mk_junction "Local Settings" "AppData\Local"
call :mk_junction "Menu D‚marrer" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu"
call :mk_junction "Mes documents" "Documents"
call :mk_junction "ModŠles" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates"
call :mk_junction "Recent" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent"
call :mk_junction "SendTo" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo"
call :mk_junction "Voisinage d'impression" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts"
call :mk_junction "Voisinage r‚seau" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts"
call :mk_junction "AppData\Local\Application Data" "AppData\Local"
call :mk_junction "AppData\Local\Historique" "AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\History"
call :mk_junction "AppData\Local\Temporary Internet Files" "AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files"
call :mk_junction "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programmes" "AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs"
call :mk_junction "Documents\Ma musique" "Music"
call :mk_junction "Documents\Mes images" "Pictures"
call :mk_junction "Documents\Mes vid‚os" "Videos"
endlocal
goto :eof

:mk_junction
set link=%1
set target=%2
set link="%new_home%\%link:~1,-1%"
set target="%new_home%\%target:~1,-1%"
echo %link% -^> %target%
if exist %link% (
  echo found %link%, skipped
  goto :eof
)
mklink /J %link% %target%
::icacls %link% /deny Everyone:(S,RD) /L
icacls %link% /deny "Tout le monde":(S,RD) /L
icacls %link% /setowner SYSTEM /L
attrib +H +S +I %link% /L
goto :eof

For cardspace files, I suspected a mismatch between Administrateurs (French, unknown group) and Administrators (English, valid group) accounts. I managed to move or copy the files with cygwin mv or cp. Afterwards, I just did *attrib +h* on cardspace folder and files (CardSpaceSP2.db and CardSpaceSP2.db.shadow).

I ignored Google Drive, Google recreate it automatically (it wouldn't use a copy of the original folder).

Final step :

move c:\users\ded c:\users\ded.old
mklink /j c:\users\ded d:\ded

And fix d:\ded permissions (same as above).

Now I reopen a session with ded users with my new user profile folder.

HTH

Saving OLEObject Content To File

It is possible with OLE to embed files in Excel workbooks and saves them back to disk (I know OLE is not cutting edge technology). To embed some file :

• Insert ribbon menu
• Object (in Text)
• From file tab
• (Browse to file)

If your file is another Office document, saving it back to disk is trivial. But here I want to embed any file (e.g. txt, xml). Anton post gave me the directions. I pushed further the analysis and eventually reversed engineered the OLEObject MemoryStream content :

0x2 0x0	header
string\0	file name
string\0	file path
0x0 0x0 0x3 0x0	(native header ?)
int	temp file path length
string\0	temp file path
int	content length
bytes	content
int	temp file path utf16 length
bytes	temp file path utf16
int	file name utf16 length
bytes	file name utf16
int	file path utf16 length
bytes	file path utf16

Note : header is different for non Package OLE objects like Office documents or pdf.

In this sample program, I load some excel workbook and for each embedded ole object, I display its name and its content :

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var excel = new Application();
    try
    {
        Workbook workbook = excel.Workbooks.Open(@"D:\Classeur1.xlsx");
        foreach (Worksheet worksheet in workbook.Worksheets)
        {
            foreach (OLEObject ole in worksheet.OLEObjects())
            {
                Console.WriteLine("name : {0}", ole.Name);
                if (ole.progID == "Package")
                {
                    string content = ole.GetContent();
                    if (content != null)
                        Console.WriteLine(content);
                }
            }
        }
        workbook.Close();
    }
    finally
    {
        excel.Quit();
    }
    Console.Write("Press a key...");
    Console.Read();
}

The progID has "Package" value when the embedded content is not standard OLE content. The GetContent extension method gets a MemoryStream from the OLEObject and loads the content from the stream :

static class OLEExtensions
{
    public static string GetContent(this OLEObject ole)
    {
        ole.Copy();
        System.Windows.Forms.IDataObject data = System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.GetDataObject();
        object obj = data.GetData("Native");
        System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.SetDataObject("");
        var ms = obj as MemoryStream;
        if (ms != null)
            return ms.GetOLEContent();
        return null;
    }
}

We copy the OLE object to the clipboard to get the MemoryStream. The STAThread attribute is required in Main method to avoid some NullReferenceException when calling GetData method. The GetOLEContent extension method extracts the content from the stream thanks to the reverse engineered stream structure :

static class OLEStreamExtensions
{
    public static int ReadHeader(this MemoryStream ms)
    {
        var header = new byte[2];
        int read = ms.Read(header, 0, header.Length);
        if (read != header.Length)
            throw new FormatException("End of stream while reading header");
        if (header[0] != 2 || header[1] != 0)
            throw new FormatException("Bad header");
        return read;
    }
    public static string ReadString(this MemoryStream ms)
    {
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        while (true)
        {
            int b = ms.ReadByte();
            if (b == -1)
                throw new FormatException("End of stream while reading string");
            if (b == 0)
                return sb.ToString();
            sb.Append((char)b);
        }
    }
    public static int ReadInt(this MemoryStream ms)
    {
        var bytes = new byte[4];
        int read = ms.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
        if (read != bytes.Length)
            throw new FormatException("End of stream while reading int");
        return BitConverter.ToInt32(bytes, 0);
    }
    public static byte[] ReadBytes(this MemoryStream ms, int count)
    {
        var bytes = new byte[count];
        int read = ms.Read(bytes, 0, count);
        if (read != count)
            throw new FormatException("End of stream while reading bytes");
        return bytes;
    }
    public static string GetOLEContent(this MemoryStream ms)
    {
        ms.ReadHeader();
        string name = ms.ReadString();
        string path = ms.ReadString();
        int reserved = ms.ReadInt();
        if (reserved != 0x30000)
            throw new FormatException(string.Format("Unexpected reserved bytes : got {0} but expected {1}", reserved.ToString("x"), 0x30000.ToString("x")));
        int tempLength = ms.ReadInt();
        string tempPath = ms.ReadString();
        if (tempPath.Length + 1 != tempLength)
            throw new FormatException(string.Format("Mismatch between temp length {0} and temp full path length {1}", tempLength, tempPath.Length + 1));
        int contentLength = ms.ReadInt();
        byte[] content = ms.ReadBytes(contentLength);
        int delta = sizeof(int) * 3 + (name.Length + path.Length + tempPath.Length) * 2;
        if (ms.Length != ms.Position + delta)
            throw new FormatException("Unexpected end of file");
        return UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(content);
    }
}

This code uses Excel but it might work with any Office document (Word, Powerpoint...). Of course, you should have installed the PIA. I have validated this code with xml and txt files. I use Excel 2007 SP3 MSO.

Edit : You can refactor this code to extract the name and the bytes of each embedded object to be able to save the contents to files :

class OLEContent
{
    #region Fields
    private readonly string name;
    private readonly byte[] content;
    #endregion
    public OLEContent(string name, byte[] content)
    {
        this.name = name;
        this.content = content;
    }
    public string Name { get { return name; } }
    public byte[] Content { get { return content; } }
}
...
public static OLEContent GetOLEContent(this MemoryStream ms)
{
    ...
    return new OLEContent(name, content);
}
...
OLEContent content = ole.GetContent();
if (content != null)
    File.WriteAllBytes(Path.Combine(tempPath, content.Name), content.Content);
...

This new version can also save images (like jpg) to disk.

From Google Reader To Tiny Tiny RSS

In early 2000s, I migrated from FeedReader application to Google Reader. Now it's time to move on, again.
I have chosen Tiny Tiny RSS because :

• It was in Slashdot comments
• It has both a Web interface and an Android app
• It is a very active project
• I can host it myself (it's not in some cloud)
• Articles will not be marked read after 30 days
• I can disable article purge

Hosting
Tiny Tiny RSS works fine with WampServer but I do not allow connections from internet to my local home private network.
I could not use the following web hosting providers :

• free.fr : no support for PHP 5.3
• olympe : doc is dead, do not know how to upload files
• 000webhost : ftp is deadly slow, tt-rss does not work (uname, not writable errors)
• byethost : dojo not defined error, could not load feeds
• Toile Libre : dead

I have chosen hostinger :

• ttrss works ! (PHP 5.3.20 and you can enable PHP 5.4)
• small .p.ht url suffix

PHP has open_basedir restrictions but :

• you can use this patch
• You must use the 'resolved' url once all redirections have been resolved

Sample feeds resolved by firefox :

• The Daily WTF : http://thedailywtf.com/rss.aspx gives http://syndication.thedailywtf.com/TheDailyWtf
• PC Inpact : http://www.pcinpact.com/rss/news.xml gives http://pcinpact.com.feedsportal.com/c/35178/f/652880/index.rss

Edit 2013.04.01 : hostinger lets you add cron jobs to update feeds.
Edit 2013.04.11 : 10 days later, I got an official answer from hostinger support saying that cron jobs only support PHP 5.2. Too bad...

InvalidCastException in AddInToken.Activate

If you're playing with System.AddIn (also called MAF for Managed Addin Framework not to be confused wief MEF which is Managed Extensibility Framework), you might get an InvalidCastException when calling Activate<T> method on some AddInToken instance : unable to cast transparent proxy to type ...

First of all, try to rebuild your pipeline folder from scratch, check with AddInUtil.exe that there are no warning.

If you still get the error, ensure that the program you are running has no dependency on any pipeline assembly. Your main project should not depend on the following assemblies : addin, addin adapter, addin view, contract. Otherwise, the token activation will get completely mixed up.

HTH