Introduction
I find the Open Command Window Here utility in the
XP Power Toys bundle absolutely indispensable. Put simply, it adds an
item to Windows Explorer's context menu that opens a DOS session in the current
directory. This article contains and explains two simple registry hacks that
add a .NET Command Prompt Here menu item to Windows
Explorer's context menu that runs
vsvars32.bat and
then opens a DOS session in the current directory. I use this in place of
the Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt
shortcut installed by VS.NET 2003.
It's not magic. Just simple and useful.
Using the code
Unzip dotNET_cmd_here.zip.
Double click on both .reg files contained therein, which
should be named .NET Command Prompt Here - Directory.reg and
.NET Command Prompt Here - Drive.reg. This adds the .NET
Command Prompt Here
menu item that is both described and shown above. When you select the menu
item, you get something like the DOS session shown below.
Now you can gacutil and ngen to your heart's content.
Points of Interest
Each .reg script has been tested on several XP Pro systems with
VS .NET 2003. The command actually added to the registry reads cmd /k
"%VS71COMNTOOLS%vsvars32.bat"
, which uses the VS71COMNTOOLS variable added to the environment
variables by VS.NET 2003. I'm not sure whether VS.NET 2002 adds this variable
so, if you're still using VS.NET 2002, look at your environment variables
and add the appropriate variable or <kludge>hardcode the
path</kludge>.
If you actually look into the .reg scripts, you'll see that the command is
written in hex(2). This has to do with the fact that the value is REG_EXPAND_SZ
types rather than the default REG_SZ
. If you're a registry maven, this is all old hat. For me, however, this was
all new. Thus ends my first CodeProject article.
