I've run into an issue with a program I created using Livecode, and now I'm looking for some help from the experts. My Google-fu is strong, yet the answer eludes me...
So here's the deal. I made a very basic note-taking program for Windows only, using very noob skills. I've been using it daily for work for the past month at least. It functions exactly as it should, except for these few things that don't make sense:
When loading the program, it takes 25-30 seconds to load. Not convenient considering it's pretty basic; one button and 5-6 text input fields, with the same number of label fields. And one background. The button just clears the text input fields.
I started to notice a problem when I went to create a batch file to load all my work programs. When the program is loaded thru Command Prompt, if I close CMD it will close the program too. I tried the same using Powershell, and it still closes as soon as the Powershell window closes. Really really strange.
I managed to find another standalone program made with Livecode, downloaded it and tested the CMD command to see if the same thing happened. It didn't, that program loaded instantly and it is ENORMOUS. It also didn't close when I closed the CMD window. I even tried this: opened my program and the downloaded program using the same CMD session, and when I closed CMD, my program closed but the downloaded one did not.
Then, I downloaded the source code for the program that was working correctly. I created a standalone for it, and tried to open that. It acts the same way as my note program does.
I don't get it. It's got to be something in my Standalone Application Settings considering what happened in the last step I mentioned, and I've been over and over those settings for hours, but I just don't have the knowledge of LC to know what to look for. I've scoured the web looking for answers to this, but it seems to be just me having this issue (story of my life, lol).
I'll be happy to post any codes, scripts, or files needed, please let me know. I just don't know which things to post =P
Any suggestions are very much appreciated!! Thank you. =)
If you call the program from the prompt directly, e.g. using
C:\program files (x86)\your_standalone.exe
the app is treated as a command line app. I have also noticed that a LiveCode app can sometimes close if the invoking command line prompt is closed, while it may sometimes continue to run. Perhaps the handling of the relaunch message has to do with it, since this message basically handles commands from the command line.
If you want the command line process to finish independently from the invoked LiveCode application, you can use the start command:
start "" "C:\program files (x86)\your_standalone.exe"
don't have enough info to be able to tell what your issue is. But that much of a delay is not usual for LiveCode apps so something is definitely wrong. How long does your app take to load if you open the stackfile in the IDE?
Not sure what StackOverflow allows but if you could upload your scripts and if possible stackfile that will give us more to go on
This has nothing to do with Windows, Batchfiles, or CMD.
CMD can workaround your problem, if it's a GUI program. See Start command, and read the help as it explains the starting behaviour of CMD and CMD's Start.
Explorer has different rules. Anything else that starts programs call CreateProcessExW which has it's own rules.
Related
I have little previous experience with Windows (for programming, anyway), but recognizing that Windows has an enormous market share, I am trying to support it in my programs (even though they are just for fun, I like to pretend they're big projects). I have written a tiny shell with minimal (and when I say minimal, I mean minimal) features.
I am trying to port it to Windows and would like to use it independently from cmd.exe in a Win32 Console window (meaning the shell part of cmd.exe isn't running at all, but the window used for it shows). I have already done most of the other porting stuff such as build system (CMake) and changing appropriate Unix syscalls to Windows ones in a #define. I have done a little research and found little on this topic, however. I know it is possible because I've seen it done with Bash. Visual Studio also used to do it when I ran a program in its GUI.
Reference article I got some of this info from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32_console
Note: What I mean is when you click on it and it opens it without running cmd in its own little console window. Or when you type it into cmd it opens in a separate window that isn't running cmd. I am assuming cmd.exe and the console window it runs in are two separate things, but if I am wrong, please let me know. :)
This question is inspired by https://askubuntu.com/questions/111144/are-terminal-and-shell-the-same and a similar question where I got that Wikipedia link. Someone said that the console window and the shell were separate. I was writing my own shell so I started to wonder how to make mine independent of the default one.
The Win32 Console and cmd.exe are two different things. Windows automatically opens a console window when a program that needs one is started. It decides whether do to so by switches hard-wired into the executable. This window will be running said program. If the program that started the process is running in a console window, the two programs will share that console window.
As Noodles said, it really is that simple. You just start it. Double-clicking on it will do it. The CreateProcess() function with CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE passed to it will do it. Running the program from cmd.exe with
start <command>
will do it.
There is also a family of functions in the Windows API, called FreeConsole() and AllocConsole() that will free a program from its current console and create a new console for it, respectively.
Reference link (given by Noodles): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682010(v=vs.85).aspx
So honestly, I don't really 'get' what's going on here, I mean, can I open the regular windows cmd.exe and use node from there? Or does it have to be from the node.js command window? Can I move files around on my system using the node.js command window? And yes, I currently can't figure out how to get it to interpret what i write, although it was working perfect before, but now I cant seem to escape from '...' every line, with no response.
Thanks
I use Node on *nix, so I'm not sure if it's different in Windows. But on *nix systems, the ellipses means it's waiting on you to finish a code block or the like. You should be able to hit CTRL+C (again, might be different in Windows) to cancel out of the edit you're in or CTRL+Z to kill the REPL entirely.
I am trying to make a simple ruby script. However, when I run it, the command line opens, and closes almost immediately. I had the same problem with a visual basic console application, so I'm not sure if this is a problem with command prompt.
I am running Windows 8 with Ruby 1.9.3. Any help is appreciated.
This is a common symptom when developing command line applications on Windows, especially when using IDEs.
The correct way to solve the problem is to open the command line prompt or PowerShell manually, navigate to the directory where the program is located and execute it manually via the command line:
ruby your_program.rb
This is how command line programs were designed to be executed from the start. When you run your code from an IDE, it opens a terminal and tells it to execute your program. However, once your program has finished executing, the terminal has nothing to do anymore and thus closes.
However, if you open the terminal, then you the one telling it what to do, not the IDE, and thus the terminal expects more input from you even after the program has finished. It doesn't close because you haven't told it to close.
You can also use this workaround at the end of your Ruby script:
gets
This will read a line from standard input and discard it. It prevents your program, and thus the terminal, from finishing until you've pressed return.
Similar workarounds can be used in any language such as C and C++, but I don't think they are solving the actual problem.
However, don't let this discourage you! Feel free to use gets while you are learning. It's a really convenient workaround and you should use it.
Just be aware that these kinds of hacks aren't supposed to show up in production code.
Are you running from the command line or as an executable. Try placing a busy loop at the end to see the output or wait for keyboard input. If you run outside a command line the command line exits upon completion of the script.
this is not yet another "I need a console in my GUI app" that has been discussed quite frequently. My situation differs from that.
I have a Windows GUI application, that is run from a command line. Now if you pass wrong parameters to this application, I do not want a popup to appear stating the possible switches, but I want that printed into the console that spawned my process.
I got that far that I can print into the console (call to AttachConsole(...) for parent process) but the problem is my application is not "blocking". As soon as I start it, the command prompt returns, and all output is written into this window (see attached image for illustration).
I played around a bit, created a console app, ran it, and see there, it "blocks", the prompt only re-appears after the app has terminated. Switching my GUI app to /SUBSYSTEM:Console causes strange errors (MSVCRTD.lib(crtexe.obj) : error LNK2019: nonresolved external Symbol "_main" in function "___tmainCRTStartup".)
I have seen the pipe approach with an ".exe" and a ".com" file approach from MSDEV but I find it horrible. Is there a way to solve this prettier?
This is not behaviour that you can change by modifying your application (aside from re-labelling it as already discussed). The command interpreter looks at the subsystem that an executable is labelled with, and decides whether to wait for the application to terminate accordingly. If the executable is labelled as having a GUI, then the command interpreter doesn't wait for it to terminate.
In some command interpreters this is configurable. In JP Software's TCC/LE, for example, one can configure the command interpreter to always wait for applications to terminate, even GUI ones. In Microsoft's CMD, this is not configurable behaviour, however. The Microsoft answer is to use the START command with the /WAIT option.
Once again: This is not the behaviour of your application. There is, apart from relabelling as a TUI program, no programmatic way involving your code to change this.
Maybe write a console-based wrapper app that checks the parameters, prints the error message on bad parameters, and calls/starts up the actual program when the parameters are correct?
I tried to wrap a little command in a batchfile to prevent me from typing it the whole time. But the result was a mess! I'm ended up with thousands of cmd processes and was unable to stop it with CTRL+C
The command was quite simple START iisreset
System Win7 64bit
Why is that happening?
EDIT:
With some help and additional tests I can now say that the Batch command START within a *.cmd file cause that mess. It opens a new commandwindow with every window until it crashes. Maybe you have luck and hit CTRL-C exactly the right time, but that really has to be luck. Anyway I will not use this command in future and it also seems not to be applicable to all machines. (Read the comments for full history of this)
It works OK on Windows 7 pro, 64 bit, but based on the other stuff you've tried, it looks like it might be a bug... You could try raising a bug report
(although that seems like a non-trivial exercise).