I created a simple program that takes the path of a directory as an input, creates an archive of that directory (converting it into a single file), adds a shebang to that file (so that the contents of the file can be easily extracted), and writes the file to the base directory of the specified path.
The problem is that the file does not extract itself when I double click on it. Instead the operating system (I'm using Ubuntu 11.10) tries to open it with gedit. This obviously shows the shebang, random gibberish, and the contents of the archived files.
I made the file executable, first by using chmod +x; and when it still didn't work I tried chmod 777. However it still refuses to execute the file with the shebang when I double click on it. Perhaps this is because it's not a pure text file.
Interestingly when I try to execute the file directly from command line it reads the shebang and extracts the contents of the archive properly. So there's nothing wrong with my file format. I don't know much about what operating systems do when you double click on a file but I would sure like to understand.
It surely makes no sense to add a shebang to a file if you still need to manually execute it from the command line. One advantage could be that you don't need to specify the program to open it with but I believe that's hardly an advantage. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Update 1:
The program that creates the archive is called opm. It can be installed via the node package manager using the following command:
npm install opm
After that you simply use opm to pack and unpack directories for you. For example if I have a directory called test in my home directory then I can open a terminal and execute the following command to pack it:
opm test
This will create an archive of the directory called test.pack in the home directory. The .pack file has the shebang #!/usr/bin/opm. Opening a file with the extension .pack with opm tells it that it's an archive and opm unpacks it in the same directory.
Note: Change the name of the test.pack file if you do not want it to overwrite your existing test directory.
I added the shebang to the .pack file so that it would extract itself when I opened it. However that doesn't seem to work. Nevertheless if I run one of the following command then it works:
./test.pack
You may check my source code and make any modifications to the program as you may wish to.
Update 2:
Alright I created the following .desktop file for opm and stored it in the $HOME/.local/share/applications/ directory:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=OPM
GenericName=Object Packer and Minifier
NoDisplay=true
Comment=JavaScript Package Manager
TryExec=opm
Exec=opm %f
Terminal=false
MimeType=application/opm
Now I was able to associate .pack files with opm by right clicking on a .pack file, going to the Properties window, the Open With tab, and setting opm.desktop as the default application. Now I am able to unpack a .pack file by simply opening it.
However I would like to know how to associate .pack files with the mime type application/opm. Currently the .pack files are associated with application/x-java-pack200. How do I do so? Is it better if I use a different extension (e.g. .opm)? By associating the packed archives with the mime type application/opm will the OS open them with opm by default without having to explicitly set a default application from Properties > Open With?
If there's already a MIME-type associated with .pack then you'll want to use a different extension (.opm) to associate with your MIME-type (application/opm). The way you automatically associate a program that opens files of a specific MIME-type is with xdg-mime .
Alternatively,
Edit ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list and put your MIME/application combo under [Default Applications] like so:
[Default Applications]
application/opm=opm.desktop;
Place your opm.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/ folder. (You've already done this)
Related
I have a fpc.exe executable file that is supposed to transfer the * .pas file to * .exe file but when i click on it to write command it shows help, i write command but it does not work. The command is as follows (I learned from this link :https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/user/userse10.html)
fpc [options] prog.pp
I wrote on the command box
fpc C: \ Hello.pas prog.pp
I put the Hello.pas file in drive C
What should I do in this case
Thank you so much I tried it another way, is to cmd and then type the command
fpc D: \ Hello
And this is my video
https://youtu.be/MsOfohAZjqg
I finally did it. Thank you.
I wrote on the command box
fpc C: \ Hello.pas prog.pp
There are several things wrong with this:
You should leave out the "prog.pp". The example in the link is using that as an example of the name of the source file to compile. Yours is Hello.Pas.
There should be no spaces in the file name of the source file.
Do you have write permission to the root directory of your C: drive? If not, you should move your source file(s) to a directory where you do.
So, you need something like this
fpc C:\mypascal\Hello.Pas
This will only work, btw, if fpc is on your OS Path. If it isn't, then either add add it to the Path, or include the full path to fpc.exe in your compile command.
Btw, when you said
I have a fpc.exe executable file that is supposed to transfer the * .pas file to * .exe file
actually that is not quite right. You don't have the executable file, the executable file is what you are trying to create from the Hello.Pas file by compiling it using fpc.
when I click on the fpc file, it immediately prompts me to use and tells me to hit enter
I assume you mean that this happens when you click fpc.exe in an Explorer window. I'm afraid there is no easy way to avoid this - the same thing happens if you just type
C:>fpc
in a command window. It is just listing the various compiler options, etc, that you could specify. The way you avoid that in a command window is to specify the name of the source file you want to compile. Unfortunately, there isn't a simple way of specifying the source file when you click fpc. For Explorer, it is easiest to write a batch file which prompts you for the source file name and then invokes fpc to compile it.
You should omit the prog.pp in your command line and just enter
fpc C:\Hello.pas (if the file really is located in the root of C:).
If FPC does not find errors, you should have a file C:\Hello.exe.
When I try to do this, I get the following error:
Obviously, Windows Explorer doesn't allow me to create this type of file patterns. How can I overcome this problem?
In the File Explorer, the trick is to call your file .gitignore. and it will remove the ending .
A strange behavior but, hey!, it works 😅
Or create it from a text editor...
Windows Explorer doesn't allow you to create files that consist essentially of a file extension only. This is because Windows Explorer has the option to hide file extensions, leaving you with a file you cannot see (see Why doesn’t Explorer let you create a file whose name begins with a dot?). This is not a restriction of Windows itself, or the file system in use, though.
To create a file named .gitignore, you will have to use another tool to create it. A common solution is to create a text file (e.g. test.txt), open it in Notepad, and select Save As... to rename the file to .gitignore.
The Windows command interpreter also allows you to create files without imposing the additional restrictions of Windows Explorer. A more direct solution would then be to create the file from the command line. This can be done using the following command:
copy NUL .gitignore
Note: When dealing with files that don't have a name, it's helpful to disable the option "Hide extensions for known file types" in Windows Explorer. Otherwise Windows Explorer might show files with no names, or hide them altogether.
In cmd, just type
echo. 2>.name_you_want
or
. 2>.name_you_want
to create a file.
If creating a directory, just type
mkdir .folder_name_you_want
Use command line instead.
I was also having the same error. The problem was . at the start of file or folder name.
So I created it by command line.
You can do this with command prompt for folder creation:
mkdir .folder_name
I have filename.zip file and if double click the file it has to extract the file in the desired location("c:\user\username"). I have tried using the batch file but didnt give me the required result.
#echo on
#set nested=%nested%Z
set _dest=c:\user\username
if NOT EXIST %_dest% md %_dest%
So if i double click on zip file it has to execute batch file to place file in the destination folder path.How can i do that?
If I understand correctly, you simply want to extract a .zip archive to a previously defined directory c:\user\username, when the user clicks that .zip archive.
No, this is not possible.
A .zip file has no default extraction destination. Nor has is a way to execute scripts upon extraction. It is just a container for compressed data. When you click it, your OS runs a program configured to handle .zip files, allowing you to view the contents, extract the contents, etc - but what and how exactly, is up to the user that clicked the file.
What you effectively want to have is an installer. Here are some pointers for options to do that:
Microsoft IExpress
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)
Quasi-installer using 7-zip self-extracting archive
I have zip file containing my installation files. I'm extracting this zip and copying these files into installation directory with the script shown below:
ZipDLL::extractall "$OUTDIR\demo.zip" "C:\myapp\demo\"
if I remove zip file from $OUTDIR than installer is not able to find zip file as expected. What I want to do is embedding this zip or its extracted folders into exe itself. I added
File -r "$OUTDIR/demo"
but this script didn't worked as well.
When you use the ZipDll plugin, you are referring to the file you want to process (demo.zip) by using its place at run time: along the installer.exe.
When you use the File statement to embed some files into the produced installer, you need to refer to the files by using their place at compile time.
Replace the $OUTDIR in the File statement by the path relative to the .nsi script.
BTW, you should take the habit to check at the compilation log, NSIS probably tells you about that kind of problem when paths are incorrect at compile-time.
I've finished a little useful script written in Bash, hosted on github. It's tested and documented. Now, I struggle with how to make it installable, i.e. where should I put it and how.
It seems other such projects use make and configure but I couldn't really find any information on how to do this for bash scripts.
Also I'm unsure into which directory to put my script.
I know how to make it usable by myself but if a user downloads it, I want to provide the means for him to install it easily.
There is no standard for this because most of the time, a project isn't a single script file. Also single file scripts don't need a build step (the script is already in an executable form) and configuration usually comes from an external config file (so no need for a configure script, either).
But I suggest to add a comment near the top of the file which explains what it does and how to install it (i.e. chmod +x + copy to folder).
Alternatively, you could create an installer script which contains your original script plus a header which asks the user where she wants to install the real script and which does everything (mkdir, set permissions with sudo, etc) but it really feels like overkill in your case.
If you want to make it installable so the package manager can easily install and remove (!) it, you need to look at the documentation for rpm or Debian packaging. These are the two most used package managers but they can't install a script per-user (so it would probably end up in /usr/bin)
instruct them to create a file named after the script in their home directory, chmod ug+x the file so it has executable permissions than put the script inside the file, don't forget the #!/bin/bash up top of the vim. This example is a script to copy a file, archive the copied file than remove the copied file leaving only the original file and the archived file.
#!/bin/bash
#### The following will copy the desired file
cp -r /home/wes/Documents/Hum430 /home/wes/docs
#### Next archives the copied file
tar -zcvf Hum430.tar.gz /home/wes/docs
#### and lastly removes the un-archived copy leaving only the original and the archived file.
rm -r /home/wes/docs
### run the file with ./filename (whatever the file is named)