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

[Nick Treleaven]

On 11/12/2012 19:20, Dimitar Zhekov wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:44:20 +0000
> Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> 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. [...]
>>
>> 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. [...]
>
> Now that's a... a system designed without security, attempting to
> provide "compatibility" with weird tricks.
>
> What's the situation with geany.exe in this case - doesn't it create
> even more problems? The newest win~1 versions are very sinsitive about
> replacing executables.

To be honest I don't understand exactly when the VirtualStore path gets 
written to, but for Geany I think we probably want to just disable it 
altogether. I think this requires a 'manifest' XML file, referenced in 
the .rc file:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756929.aspx

Yet another Windows build file with a version and metadata to update on 
release :-/