Beta.7 UX uninstaller fails to clean up all files Topic is solved

[TAC109]

Beta.7 uninstaller leaves behind:

• v2.0-beta.7\AutoHotkey.exe (symlink)
• v1.1.34.03\AutoHotkey.chw

Cheers

[lexikos]

Where did the chw file come from? The uninstaller is designed to remove files that were installed, and only those files.

[TAC109]

I’m not sure. I had assumed that it was generated by the help system, but I tested just now and it didn’t reappear.

Disregard this one for now.

Cheers

[lexikos]

A chw file is not deleted by the v1 uninstaller either. If the help system was prone to creating this file, in many cases it would be unable to do so because it doesn't have write access to the installation directory.

A chw file is apparently "a Compiled Help Index file" which is "created when multiple Compiled HTML Help (. CHM) files are merged together". We're not doing that, and the current documentation doesn't even use the standard index or search functions.

[TAC109]

From away back Ahk2Exe has used the following code to display the help file, starting at a particular topic (Name):

Code: Select all

VarSetCapacity(ak, ak_size := 8+5*A_PtrSize+4, 0) ; HH_AKLINK struct
NumPut(ak_size, ak, 0, "UInt")
NumPut(&Name, ak, 8)
DllCall("hhctrl.ocx\HtmlHelp", "ptr", GuiHwnd, "str", HelpFile, "uint"
, 0x000D, "ptr", &ak) ; 0x000D: HH_KEYWORD_LOOKUP

It appears that HtmlHelp tries to create a .chw file, and succeeds when in a user level testing environment, but fails to do so under 'Program Files' (this is expected).

Recently I enhanced the help system so that it finds the most recent installed help file for an AHK version. I expect that, when testing these changes I somehow allowed the .chw file to be created under the 'Program Files\AutoHotkey' directories.

Cheers

[lexikos]

Another way to open the topic corresponding to an index entry is to use search.htm (also usable with the online docs):

Code: Select all

Run hh.exe "ms-its:C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.chm::/docs/search.htm#q=Ahk2Exe"

(It appears Ragnar implemented this in 2017.)

I think the installation scripts directly Run the dash or compiler after installation, which would generally cause them to run as administrator. Of course, non-admin installations would be writable by default.