Running a selfwritten ruby program outside of an IDE - ruby

I was wondering if it was possible to run a selfwritten ruby program just like any other program by double-clicking an icon of some sort.
And if it's possible, how do I do it?
I wrote a little program for a friend but I don't want him to have to use the command line to run it, because that's rather inconvenient (unless there is a way to just double-click and the command line opens the program itself..).
Thanks for your help!

The simple answer that should work for all versions of Windows is to just create a simple batch launcher.
Create a .bat file. I usually just create a new .txt file via "right click > new > text document". Then rename it, highlight everything, including the extension, and rename it to something like run.bat. The .bat part is important. Once you rename it, the icon should change to gears. If you can't overwrite the extension, or Windows is still treating it as a text document, you'll need to either manually save it as a bat, or disable "hide file extensions" in the explorer settings so the extension can be changed.
Edit the bat file, and put into it something like:
#echo off
YOUR RUN COMMAND HERE THAT YOU WOULD NORMALLY TYPE MANUALLY
pause
Paste the command that you would normally run manually where the capital text is. The first line is so it doesn't repeat the commands back, and the pause is so if an error happens, the command prompt doesn't immediately close. This gives you a chance to read the error.
Save it and close it. Now, if you double click on the bat file, your program should run.

Multiple ways
if it's for occasional use and for one script only I would pack it
to a Windows executable with Ocra, then you can double click
the .exe itself or a link to it
same as above but use jRuby and create a .jar file, not for beginners though
the easiest: if you configure Windows to start/run .rb files with your ruby.exe you can double click the .rb files itself and they
will execute, they will have the red Ruby stone icon
if you run a .reg file to enable drap and drop on .rb files you can combine the previous technique to drop files on the script and
they will be the parameters to the script, see my answer here for the reg file
my favorite: copy the .rb to your windows "C:\Users\your_user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo\"
folder, then you can right click file(s) or folder(s) and select
sendto and select your script, the files or folder will again be the
parameters for your script
you can create a .bat or .cmd file that starts with the path to your ruby.exe and the script as parameter, use rubyw.exe if you
don't want output

Related

Can't open a .chm file from a batch file

I am trying to open a .chm file from a batch file.
The batch file has only this text in it :
echo off
start "S:\G.T.T\GTT-Vandemecum\Help Danny\GTT.chm"
If I run the batch file, the commandline opens but nothing further happens.
If I copy paste S:\G.T.T\GTT-Vandemecum\Help Danny\GTT.chm in start menu/run then it does works.
If I make a shortcut with target "S:\G.T.T\GTT-Vandemecum\Help Danny\GTT.chm" then it also works.
So the command works everywhere, except from a batch file.
What am I doing wrong here ?
It might also be important to know that when I start it from the shortcut, or start menu/runI always get a dialog
We can't verify who created this file. Are you sure you want to open this file ?
I am using Windows 7
EDIT
My problem is not the dialog, my problem is that nothing happens when I open the chm file from a batch file
The Start command is probably seeing your doublequoted string as a title, enter Start /? at the command prompt for its usage information.
Try adding an empty title first:
#Echo Off
Start "" "S:\G.T.T\GTT-Vandemecum\Help Danny\GTT.chm"

Executing a command-line .exe file

I have a .exe file converted from a .jar.
It is a command based application, so I have to start it with a batch script. Here is the batch script:
#echo off
cd C:\desktop\plant-text-adventure-win
start planttextadventure
pause
When I double click on the batch script, this happens: Windows could not find 'planttextadventure'. Please confirm if you have input the correct name and retry.
I don't know what is happening, I have no idea about cmd as I use Mac, but I can confirm I have an executable called planttextadventure.exe in a folder called plant-text-adventure-win.
You should test your batch file by executing it within a shell.
Simply enter within the start menu the command cmd to open up a shell. Within this black box you could now simply enter the commands from your batch script and lookout for some error message.
If you look at your script I would guess that the cd command (to change the current directory) is not correct. Maybe you should replace it with
cd %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\plant-text-adventure-win
because the desktop folder is on a default installation not directly under the root drive but within the user profile available.
Another solution to get this thing to work, is by opening the windows explorer, going to the .exe file you wish to execute and drag & drop the .exe file with a right mouse click onto the desktop.
Then a context menu appears and you select the option Create shortcut here.

Is there a way to run a command line "inside" a symlink?

I have a symlink named example.avi that points to a real example.avi video file. When a program tries opens the symlink, it really opens the video file. But now I would like execute a command line whenever a program tries to open the symlink file.
Is that possible?
ps: windows
No, there is no built-in way of creating a symlink or other file system object that causes a command to be executed when it is opened by an application.
It should in principle be possible to do this with a file system filter driver. But that's very complicated. I believe there are some third-party tools to simplify this sort of task, but I don't have any experience with them.
While I am clearly ignorant on the subject of symlinks in Windows (see my comments on your question). I just played with it and proved that you could basically do this by symlinking to a wrapper for your avi. I.e. symlink to an exe or a batch file, etc. which does what you want and then opens the avi. Here's a test I ran with txt files and notepad:
Create a file called test.txt with some text. Create a file next to it called test.bat. Here's the batch:
notepad test.txt
When you run the batch, it just opens the txt in notepad.
Then I added a symlink:
mklink test2.txt test.bat
Now, when I type test2.txt in the command prompt, or double click on it, it runs the batch and opens the test.txt file. Obviously, you can use the same basic logic. It doesn't, however, fire the batch off when I open the symlink in Notepad++. It just opens to batch for editing instead.
Of course, maybe you don't want a second file, in which case you need to literally embed your avi in some wrapper. I guess we ned to know more about what you want to do. It sounds like an attempt at malware hidden in a video to me...

Block windows file

There can be "This file came from another computer and might be blocked" message in file properties.
Is there a way to block back file in windows 7?
I need this for program testing.
You have to recreate the alternate data stream for the file. The easiest way to do this is by using Notepad. Run cmd.exe and navigate to the directory that contains the file. I'll use test.txt as an example, type this command:
Notepad "test.txt:Zone.Identifier"
Double quotes required. Notepad prompts you to create a new file, click Yes. Paste or write this:
[ZoneTransfer]
ZoneId=3
Press Ctrl+S to save.

What is the simplest program I can write to invoke a batch script?

It is very stupid that windows will not let you add batch files to your quick launch or whatever they call in in windows 7. That bar across the bar, i can attach firefox there, command prompt, even paint (my favorite), but not a batch file. I can "pin" it to another program, which is just weird. I want it to standalone, the batch file does enough work by itself.
So lets say i have batch file. What is the simplest executable program I can write to invoke said script. Then I can finally pin all my useful batch files on that quick-jump-pin-bar.
If I remember right, you can do this by first pinning a shortcut to CMD.exe to the taskbar. Then edit the command, and change CMD.exe to CMD.exe /c MyBatchFile.bat. I believe this will execute the batch file.
Since you can only pin one cmd, here's an alternative, assuming you have the .NET framework installed - a very simple C# application:
Populate a textfile with the following contents:
class Program {
static void Main() {
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(#"c:\test.bat");
}
}
where Program is the name of the executable you want to create, and c:\test.bat is the full path to the batch file. Save the file as Program.cs. Execute the following from the command line:
c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc.exe Program.cs
You can replace 2.0.50727 with whatever directory exists on your machine - might be 1.1.something or 3.5 or 4.0.something - it's all the same for this scenario.
This will generate Program.exe. You can put that exe file wherever you want, and pin that executable to the taskbar. You can discard the .cs file once you're done making your executables.
Kind of a crappy solution, but it should work, assuming you don't find anything better. And if you don't have the .NET framework (which I'm not sure is even possible in Windows 7), you can install it pretty easily.
The easiest way is to create a folder, put your batch files in it, and pin the folder to the menu bar :D
You can also write a startup script, so the batch file will be executed on startup, but I don't know if you want to run those scripts on every bootup... You can also add the command prompt to the bar, and edit the startup path..
Use command switches on CMD.exe.
cmd.exe /c "myscript.bat"
As a sort of workaround you could use the following trick. Pin an arbitrary application to the task bar, Shift+right click on the pinned icon, select Properties, change 'Target' and 'Start in' accordingly. Rename it too if you like.
You can pin more than one .bat file using this technique.

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