bmatzelle1
6th May 2002 17:05 UTC

Hiding ExecWait windows
  My installer uses ExecWait quite a bit and some of the programs that it executes take a lot of time to execute, thus the console window sits in the foreground for long periods of time. Is there a possiblity that one of the following things could be added to the installer to make ExecWait a little cleaner:

* Hide the console window
* Minimize the console or place it behind the installer window
* Fire up a nice message box with a message that explains to the user what it is doing during the wait like "Starting MySQL Daemon ..."

Warm regards,

Brent

By the way, this issue has been brought up before with no results: http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=77705

kichik
6th May 2002 18:28 UTC

What you can do is excute the program with Exec and not ExecWait and then find its window with FindWindow. Then you should call BringToFront to bring the installer back to front, show some install options dialog that says installing whatever or just printing it in the details, and finally enter into a loop waiting for the window to close (using FindWindow and waiting for it to return zero).

To just hide it you can create a shortcut for it and execute it with ExecWait.

bmatzelle1
7th May 2002 03:03 UTC

I tried your solution but it still is unsatisfactory. To the user the console still flashes to screen before going to the background and the installer seems like it is frozen (to an ordinary user) while the command is running. I believe that the solution to this problem will require some enhancements to the ExecWait code base.

Justin, could you please look into this, or point me in the right direction so I can add something like this myself?

Thanks and warm regards,

Brent

rainwater
7th May 2002 15:58 UTC

If you are running DOS commands, you need to create a dll extension to execute the program and pump the output to the program and not to a console window.

kichik
7th May 2002 16:05 UTC

[edit]rainwater's idea seems better than mine :up: [/edit]

How aobut this:

DetailPrint "Executing whatever, please hold..."

>SetDetailsPrint none

GetTempFileName $R1

StrCpy $R1 "$R1.lnk"

>CreateShortcut $R1 "whatever dos command you want" "paramaters" "" "" SW_SHOWMINIMIZED

Exec $R1

loop:

   Sleep 200

   FindWindow $R2 "ConsoleWindowClass" "window name"

  ; NOTE: Make sure it is the same class name in Win9x too

   StrCmp $R2"0" 0 loop

Delete $R1

SetDetailsPrint both

DetailPrint "Done!" 

bmatzelle1
7th May 2002 19:19 UTC

Create an extension every time I want to prevent a console window from showing up? There has to be a better way.

Brent

kichik
7th May 2002 19:27 UTC

If you want it just to hide use my code, if you want a more elegant solution use rainwater's solution.
BTW you won't have to create an extension for every console window, just one that will get the message to display and the command to run using the stack.

Fightin_Foo
23rd November 2007 22:22 UTC

I am in a similiar situation, did you ever get the problem solved bmatzelle1? Can anyone tell me how or point me to a place that says how to create the dll like rainwater suggested?

kichik
23rd November 2007 22:29 UTC

Use nsExec.

Fightin_Foo
23rd November 2007 22:44 UTC

I've tried to use nsExec before, but it seems that it gives no indication that the script has been run. Did it display something and I just missed it?

kichik
23rd November 2007 23:44 UTC

No, it doesn't display anything. That's the whole point - it hides the command window. See Docs\nsExec and Examples\nsExec for more details on what it returns to the script.

pospec
21st December 2007 07:18 UTC

Is there a way to display ExecWait's "DOS Box" (console) output in installation details? I know that I can redirect output to file like "hello.exe > hello.txt" and then display that .txt. Any other way? Thank you.

kichik
21st December 2007 09:43 UTC

nsExec::ExecToLog.

pospec
21st December 2007 10:26 UTC

Yay! :-) Thank you very much!