Inno Setup Pascal Script documentation - api

I started to use Inno Setup as I thought the Pascal Scripting would make it a lot easier for me to do custom stuff, compared to NSIS. However, it seems that there is no documentation anywhere on the Web? The official Wiki has been deleted and I can't find any API documentation. There was an earlier question (3 years-old, an eternity!) which ended in the sad statement that nothing existed.
So far I was able to get help (mostly on Stackoverflow ;-)) each time I wanted to do something specific but I don't want to go accross forums each time I want to do something. My problem right now is to create a directory if it doesn't exist, and I haven't find anyone asking this question yet. So I'm asking. If you know how to do it, can you please tell me (how to do it ;-)) and where you learnt it?
Thanks!

Pascal script syntax is very close to the Pascal/Delphi syntax, so you have a lot of documentation in the Delphi DocWiki and Free pascal documentation about it.
The best place I know about inno-setup specific pascal script function support is the PascalScript section in the Inno Setup Help File, the most relevant sections are:
Support Functions Reference
Support Class Reference
Using DLLs
As for your last question, take a look at this:
var
DocPath: string;
DirPath: string;
begin
DocPath := ExpandConstant('{userdocs}');
DirPath := DocPath + '\ISTest';
if not DirExists(DirPath) then
begin
if not CreateDir(DirPath) then
MsgBox(SysErrorMessage(DLLGetLastError), mbError, mb_Ok);
end;
end;
Where I learned it? I'm a Delphi developer, and the aim of pascal script is to be close to Delphi, so I think I really learned it by learning Delphi. Nowadays, before to take a look at the documentation, I try to do what I want to do a la Delphi, and if I fail doing so, I resort to documentation as a last resource.

Related

Compiling Pascal code for embedded system (AT89C51RC2)

I am working on making a pretty trivial change to an old existing pascal source file. I have the source code, but need to generate a new hex file with my changes.
First, I tried compiling with "Embedded Pascal", which is the program used by my predecessor. Unfortunately, it is an unregistered copy and gives the message that the file is too large for the unregistered version. Support for and even the homepage for the project has disappeared (old), so I have no idea how I would register.
I tried a couple other compilers, "Free Pascal" and "Turbo51", and they are both giving similar errors:
Filename.pas (79): Error 36: BEGIN expected.
Linkcode $2E
^
The source code begins with
Linkcode $2E
LinkData $0A // normally 8 - make room for capacitance data
Program Main; Vector LongJmp Startup_Vector; //This inserts the start to the main routine.
uses IntLib;
I'm not well-versed in Pascal or embedded programming, but as I understand it, the Linkcode and LinkData lines are required to set up the RAM as needed. Following the "Const" and "var" declarations are subroutines that indeed start with procedure... begin... end.
I realize that Pascal is a bit out of date, but we are stuck with it and our old micro. Any ideas why previously working source code with trivial changes cannot be compiled? I am willing to consider other compilers, including paid options, if any are available with decent support. I am using Windows 10 x64 processor to compile, and flashing to an Atmel 89C51RC2.
If more source code is needed for diagnosis, please let me know what in particular, as I'll need to change some proprietary information before posting. Thanks!
Statements like linkcode and linkdata are not general, but target and compiler specific. Unless you have the know-how to reengineer to a different compiler, getting the original one is best.
Thanks to all for the information. While I didn't find an exact solution here, your comments were helpful for me to understand just how compiler-specific the Pascal code was.
In the end, I was able to get into my predecessors files and transfer registration, solving the issue for now. As suggested, I think I will port to C in the future to avoid fighting all the unsupported compiler nonsense.

Is there any good tutoria or reference for writing code with Magma?

Currently I am trying to use Magma to do matrix operation on GPU, however, I found few documents about it. The only thing I can refer to is its testing program and the online generated document(here), which is not convenient to use. And the user guide seems outdated.
If you look here, getri and potri are supported.

How to make specific changes to a closed source DLL

I was recently reading an article on the Windows Metafile vulnerability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Metafile_vulnerability#Third-party_patch) and I was interested by one of the points made.
A third party patch[9] was released by Ilfak Guilfanov on 31 December 2005 to temporarily disable the vulnerable function call in gdi32.dll.
So this got me thinking as to how Ilfak Guilfanov actually went about disabling the function in gdi32.dll.
My theory got as far as opening dependency walker and finding the function entry point and then analysing that in a Hex editor, however Hex isn't my native language unfortunately.
So would you require some form of expensive software to achieve something like this or would it be a case of a lot of trial and error ?
Note: This isn't intended as a hacking question, but more to understand what I see as a very interesting and clever process
You could open up the dll with your favorite (dis)assembler, find the entrypoint of the function and put a ret assembler instruction to directly return from the function without doing anything else.

Visusal Basic Script: Trying to obtain comments/description dll information

I have a question that pertains to scripting. For the sake of clarity I'll just start off with a bit of what I'm trying to do. We have a number of testing environments and projects going on in each environment that trying to keep track of what is where is becoming increasingly difficult.
In order to try and straighten this out I was going to create a script that would pull the comments/description (that is where our developers put the code branch,project name,and date of the build into. This is what we use for versioning) of the dll. Then I would dump this information into a simple table on an html page which would be pulled as a web part.
I was using VBS to perform this and I was able to successfully pull a version number and dump it into an HTML page. However, I have not been able to find any information on how to do this for the comments or description (using Server 2k3 and 2k8) fields.
So my question is if there is a way to pull this information using VBS, or would there be a better scripting language that would allow this to be done.
Thanks very much in advance.
I don't think exactly what you're asking for is possible, however this may be helpful:
http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/adminscripts/filesfolders/files/

Difference between (plain) Classworlds and Plexus Classworlds?

Can anyone please explain the difference between plexus-classworlds and (plain) classworlds?
These two are confusing and can't see the difference. Plexus classworlds contains almost no description. Apparently, a maven-based Java project uses both, I don't understand why.
Is it possible to replace classworlds with plexus-classworlds without much hassle?
I'm gonna answer that, even though the question is so old...
classworlds was migrated to plexus-classworlds, but the documentation on the site doesn't seem to keep up with that... the best docs I've seen was on classworlds 1.1-SNAPSHOT, although the current is plexus-classworlds 2.4.1-SNAPSHOT, and there is hardly any doc there.
if you look at plexus-classworlds, you can also see the original org.codehaus.classworlds package, with class comments like this:
A compatibility wrapper for org.codehaus.plexus.classworlds.launcher.Launcher provided for legacy code
which means that they thought about migration, but of course nothing replaces a thorough test.