Johannes Passing's Blog » Misc

cfix finished 2nd in ATI’s Automation Honors Awards, surpassed only by JUnit

jpassing — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:25:13 +0000

Along with JUnit, JWebUnit, NUnit, and SimpleTest, cfix was one of the nominees for the Automated Testing Institute’s Automation Honors Award 2009 in the category Best Open Source Unit Automated Test Tool. A few days ago, the results were published and cfix finished second — surpassed only by JUnit, which finished 1st (No real surprise here). If you are interested, there is a video in which the results are presented.

Posted in cfix, Misc Tagged: ati, automated test, awards, cfix, unit test

Overview on Designing High-Performance Windows Applications

jpassing — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:21:52 +0000

Back in 2008, the Windows Server Performance Team Blog, which I came across recently, ran a series of posts on Designing Applications for High Performance:

If you are interested in developing server side applications for Windows, these articles are definitely worth reading.

Posted in Misc Tagged: links, performance, server

Vote for cfix

jpassing — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:52:49 +0000

The Automated Testing Institute has elected cfix to be one of the finalists for the Autmation Honors award. The winners of the award will be highlighted in a Special December Edition of the Automated Software Testing Magazine.

If you are a cfix user, be sure to vote for cfix here.

And by the way, I think The Grinder, which is a really neat web performance testing framework, also deserves being voted for…

Posted in cfix, Misc Tagged: award, cfix, unit testing

More Context Menu Handlers for Everyday Use

jpassing — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:21:05 +0000

Although Windows Explorer may actually not be the brightest spot of Windows, it is still, for most users, among the most often used pograms. Customizing it to speed up certain tasks is thus a natural desire.

A while ago, I wrote about how to extend the context menu by new commands that allow MSI packages to be installed/uninstalled with logfiles being created. The registry entries I used were:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedInstall]
@="&Logged Install"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedInstall\command]
@="msiexec.exe /l* \"%1-install.log\" /i \"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedUninstall]
@="L&ogged Uninstall"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\LoggedUninstall\command]
@="msiexec.exe /l* \"%1-uninstall.log\" /x \"%1\" %*"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Msi.Package\shell\runas\command]
@="msiexec.exe /l* \"%1.log\" /i \"%1\" %*"

While I do not use Windows Installer every day, I am a heavy user of cmd.exe command prompts. Another set of custom verbs I use on my machines therefore deal with opening command line windows. Getting Windows Explorer to open a “normal” command prompt using the context menu is not hard and it has been demonstrated on various places. The idea becomes truly powerful, though, when the commands are specialized to open special kinds of command windows:

A plain command prompt
An elevated command prompt (using elevate.exe)
A WDK command prompt (WLH-chk)
A WDK command prompt (WLHA64-chk)
A Visual Studio 2005 command prompt
etc …

To distinguish the different types of consoles, I like to use different colors — The Visual Studio command prompt is white/green, the elevated prompt is green/blue, and so on. The following script puts it all together (mind the static paths):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open DDK Console here (WLH-chk)]
@="Open DD&K Console here (WLH-chk)"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open DDK Console here (WLH-chk)\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /k C:\\WinDDK\\6000\\bin\\setenv.bat C:\\WinDDK\\6000\\ chk WLH && cd /D %1 && color 1f"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open DDK Console here (WLHA64-chk)]
@="Open DD&K Console here (WLHA64-chk)"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open DDK Console here (WLHA64-chk)\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe /k C:\\WinDDK\\6000\\bin\\setenv.bat C:\\WinDDK\\6000\\ chk AMD64 && cd /D %1 && color 1f"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open Default Console here]
@="Open Default Conso&le here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open Default Console here\command]
@="cmd.exe /K \"title %1 && cd /D %1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open Elevated Console here]
@="Open Ele&vated Console here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open Elevated Console here\command]
@="d:\\bin\\elevate.exe /K \"title %1 && color 1a && cd /D %1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open VS.Net 2005 Console here]
@="Open VS.Net 200&5 Console here"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Open VS.Net 2005 Console here\command]
@="cmd.exe /K \"cd /D %1 && \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\" && color 2f\""

Finally, if you perform backups to the cloud from time to time and do want to upload unencrypted data or for other reasons encrypt specific files occasionaly, it may also be practical to have two GPG commands in your context menu — one to (symetrically) encrypt, and one to decrypt:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.gpg]
@="GpgFile"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GpgFile]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GpgFile\shell]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GpgFile\shell\Decrypt]
@="Decrypt"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GpgFile\shell\Decrypt\command]
@="\"c:\\Program Files (x86)\\GNU\\GnuPG\\gpg.exe\" -d -i -o %1.plain %1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\GpgSymmetricEncrypt]
@="Encrypt with GPG (symmetric)"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\GpgSymmetricEncrypt\command]
@="\"c:\\Program Files (x86)\\GNU\\GnuPG\\gpg.exe\" -c %1"

Posted in Misc, Tools Tagged: cmd.exe, shell, Tools, verbs, Windows

Bryan Cantrill on Real-World Concurrency

jpassing — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:01:35 +0000

Browsing through ACM Queue’s archives I came across the article Real-World Concurrency by Bryan Cantrill (who, by the way, is the inventor of DTrace) and Jeff Bonwick (Issue 5/2008). The article provides a nice summary of actual challenges and best practices for systems programming in a multithreaded/shared memory environment. Worth reading.

Posted in Misc Tagged: acm, concurrency, locking

Google Calendar, WTF?

jpassing — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:45:52 +0000

Quite obviously, Google does not always get it right either. Ever when I try to see my Google Calendar (using Opera), I am requested to login. So I enter my credentials, am redirected a couple of times and — are broght to the login page again. Logging in again does not help, I have by then entered an infinite loop. Thankfully, I can escape this loop by jumping to the original calendar URL again — now Google recognizes that I have already logged in and shows me my calendar. Great.

But this one is even better. Having received an invitation, I was presented with a page offering me to accept or reject the event.

Look at the screenshot — you can select all three options Yes, No and Maybe at the same time! Very convenient indeed. Having submitted the form, this answer seems to have been recognized as a Yes. Amazing.