[Geany-Devel] [Geany-devel] Remove MSYS dependency of Geany on Win~1 - VirtualStore data files

Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven at btinternet.com
Tue Dec 11 17:44:20 UTC 2012


On 10/07/2012 12:55, Nick Treleaven wrote:
>>> 2. A weird problem. Installing from cmd.exe doesn't overwrite
>>> geany.glade (and maybe some other files) even though it appears to
>>> succeed. I only noticed this because I'm missing the View->Editor->Color
>>> Schemes menu which was added about a month ago (I tend to test in place
>>> rather than install each time).
>>
>> OMG... Then we must choose between copy and xcopy depending on which one
>> works. Or we can define:
>
> Neither one works here ;-) But maybe it's something weird about my
> system or because I previously installed using MSYS cp.

OK, I think I finally found out whats happening here (or at least a 
related problem). Perhaps it will help someone else with the same problem.

I was reluctant to delete the installed data files in case the problem 
was specific to them, but today I did, then reinstalled. The installed 
files all got the latest versions, but when I ran Geany the old data 
files were still being loaded (glade symbol errors, filetypes.common 
debug error message).

So, I did a search for geany.glade and discovered it in:
c:\Users\Nick\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Geany\data

reading up on the VirtualStore path, I found it gets created when an 
application tries to write to a system path like Program Files, without 
the correct privileges. The application then silently receives the 
VirtualStore versions of files instead. I must have once tried to 
install geany without admin privileges, or manually copy over the data 
dir or something like that.

This behaviour is really confusing if you're not aware of it. I think 
there is a way to tell Windows not to use VirtualStore for an specific 
application though, I'll have to look into it. In the meantime I just 
deleted the Geany dir under VirtualStore, all is now working correctly.


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