i have made a MFC-based game and my project includes images and sounds. Now i want to create an installer setup in order to distribute it.
i have used the resources by providing their exact path in e.g
img->Load(L"C:\\Users\\Ad33l's\\Desktop\\block mania\\block mania\\res\\db.png");
MCIWndCreate(NULL, NULL,WS_POPUP|MCIWNDF_NOPLAYBAR|MCIWNDF_NOMENU,L"C:\\Users\\Ad33l's\\Desktop\\block mania\\block mania\\res\\tick.wav");
1.Can someone tell me any way to avoid Hard-coding the actual resource path as these resource files will not be present at this same exact path in other computers ?
2.Also guide me to handle these resource files during the creation of standalone SETUP (i am using advance installer )
(as an actual answer).
Do not use absolute path, always use relative path; relative to your EXE file is one solution.
The EXE path can be found using GetModuleFileName.
char appPath[MAXFILENAMELEN];
GetModuleFileName(NULL, appPath, MAXFILENAMELEN);
(addendum) appPath name is misleading, it contains the full name of the application; you need to extract the path from the full application name.
We do something like this:
(edit to make it compilable in unicode)
TCHAR applicationPath[MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileName(NULL, applicationPath, MAX_PATH);
CString sSoundFile(applicationPath);
PathRemoveFileSpec(sSoundFile.GetBuffer());
sSoundFile.ReleaseBuffer();
From there, you can do something like (pseudocode-ish):
img.Load( appPath + "//Images//db.png" );
You can have a variable that saves the directory they want to install your program in. After they choose the directory they want to install it in, go off of that. Or you can also use system folders like the appdata folder
A first solution would be to configure your setup project to install the installation files under the DesktopFolder\block mania\block mania\res. Then, you can access within your application the current user Desktop location and append to it the remaining fix location (block mania\block mania\res).
Another solution would be to configure the setup project to create registries at install time which will store the paths of the installation files. Then, your application could read the installation paths from registry.
Finally you could also create at install time environment variables containing the paths of the installation file and, then use within your application the environment variables to access the installed files locations.
Related
I have my project where i am using filesystem to retrieve directory of assets.
When i am lunching my program in editor(im using Visual Studio 2019) everything is fine and this code return value of working direcotry of project.
std::string currentPath = std::filesystem::current_path().string();
But when i am lunching app from .exe file this line of code returns path that leads to .exe file.
The same directory called $TargetPath in properties in VS.
So my question is why is that happening and how can i resolve this problem.Becouse of that i cannot automatically load assets when lounching app from .exe file
Because it gives the current working directory, which is set by the environment calling your program (unless your program explicitly changes it).
So, it does what it's designed to do, gives the current working directory:
Returns the absolute path of the current working directory,
So my question is why is that happening
It happens because you've configured the editor to set the working directory to one path, while you're running the program with another working directory outside the editor.
how can i resolve this problem.Becouse of that i cannot automatically load assets when lounching app from .exe file
Here is an approach:
Store the assets in a path that is relative to the exe.
Get path to the exe.
On POSIX, you can use argv[0] from arguments of main
On Windows, the documentation recommends GetModuleFileNameW
Get canonical absolute form of that path (make sure that working directory hasn't been changed before this step if the path to exe is relative).
Get the directory that contains the exe from that canonical path.
Join that directory path with the asset's relative path to get an absolute path to the asset
Load the asset using the absolute path.
I have not yet found a definitive answer about this. I am trying to have access to files in subfolders from my .EXE. When I have asked before, people tell me to use the absolute location i.e. "c:/game/info/" if I wanted to access something in /info/
But it is completely unreasonable for me or anyone to assume that someone is going to use their program from the same directory. What if the user only has a D drive? That sort of thing.
So my question is: how can I access a file in a subdirectory from my executable without relying on the entire path?
Your title says "Windows", so I'll give a WinAPI-specific answer.
On Windows, you can find your application directory with GetModuleFileName(NULL, ...), and PathRemoveFileSpec. Then PathAppend will make the full path to your data files.
Or you can store the data inside you .exe file as Win32 resources, so they never get separated.
Please note that this approach generally works only for read-only access to data files. If you try to write files in your application directory, you might be blocked by ACLs (depending on install location and local security settings of the computer).
Use GetModuleFileName (Retrieves the fully-qualified path for the file that contains the specified module. The module must have been loaded by the current process.)
char strExePath [MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileName (NULL, strExePath, MAX_PATH);
You'll then need to extract the folder path (someone has already posted how to do that), and combine your path.
Make or use an installer that asks the user where to install the executable and writes that path to the registry in a well-known location for later reference.
if you use:
#include <fstream>
ifstream stream("file");
it will be working. "file" is file in directory with your exe. Of course if you want go up or down in folders hierarchy use "..\file" or "folder\file"
I'm making a program in visual c++. The program relies on some dll files, which I don't want to place in system32. Now the dll files is in the same folder as my .exe, but i would like to move them to a sub folder. The problem is, if I move the files, my application fails to start and comes with this error message:
MyProgram.exe - Unable to Locate Component
This application has failed to start because myDll.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem.
I have had the same problem before, where if found a solution, which included adding something to the registry, but i forgot how it worked, and now I can't find the guide again.
Can someone please help me?
There is more than one way to solve this problem. As other mentioned you can modify search path for your application in registry. Sometimes, you don't have rights to write to the registry, or you cannot do it for other reasons, then you can set dll path explicitly, the WinAPI function for that is SetDllDirectory, see MSDN.
Sounds like you're after the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths key. See here for complete information. In short, a string called Path points to a DLL search path. For example if your application was called "MyApp" a .reg file like this would do the trick:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppPaths\MyApp.exe]
#="C:\\Program Files\\MyCompany\\MyApp\\MyApp.exe"
"Path"="C:\\Program Files\\MyCompany\\MyApp\\DLLs"
I believe this is the article you are looking for:
http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/W-P/dll/article.php/c99
Each application can now store it own path the registry under the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths
The use the application path, set a key for your application, using ONE.EXE from the example above:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE...\CurrentVersion\App Paths\ONE.exe
Set the (Default) value to the full path of your executable, for example:
C:\Program Files\ONE\ONE.exe
Add a sub-key named Path
I have written a c++ program and deployed it in say c:\my_app, and my executable's path is c:\my_app\my_app.exe. Say, my_app needs many files such as the_file.txt, which is located in c:\my_app\the_file.txt.
In my executable, I open the txt file as, xx.open("the_file.txt");
Moreover, I have associated my program with let's say .myp extension.
When I'm on Desktop, and want to open a file named example.myp, my program can not see the_file.txt. Because, it (somehow) assumes that it's currently working on Desktop.
Is there any easy way to handle this problem by changing shell command for open in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT? The naive solution would be to change all file open operations with something like %my_app_location/the_file.txt". I don't want to do that.
Always use a full path name to open a file. In other words, don't open "foo.txt", open "c:\bar\foo.txt". To find the install directory of your EXE use GetModuleFileName(), passing NULL for the module handle.
These days you shouldn't add files to c:\my_app....
Instead use the ProgramData Folder and full paths.
Use SHGetSpecialFolderPathA with CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA to get the ProgramData folder and the create your program directory and add your files.
You should set current directory for your app's folder with SetCurrentDirectory function. After that you can open file by name without full path
Where should I store the application installation folder for application to reffer ?
I believe what you're looking for is the GetModuleFileName function, which you can use like so:
// get the full path to the current executable
wchar_t fullPath[MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileName(NULL, fullPath, MAX_PATH);
// cut the string at the last slash, because we just want the directory
// not the actual executeable file name.
TCHAR *lastSlash = wcsrchr(fullPath, L'\\');
lastSlash = 0;
// directory where the executable is location is fullPath
This will work regardless of the current working directory and in general, this is how I do all "relative path" stuff (that is, I never actually use relative paths, they're always absolute paths, based off the value returned from the function above).
You can use the registry for storing installation folders.
::GetModuleFileName(NULL, out_lpPathName, in_size) will give you full path of your executable file.
ApplicationData folder, even not admin access can help to access you install data. use SHGetSpecialFolderPath with CISDL CSIDL_APPDATA
In the registry. To be specific, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\YourCompanyName\YourApplicationName\ if you installed your app for all users (i.e. in \Program Files), and under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\YourCompanyName\YourApplicationName\ if you installed it for a single user only.