Windows

Owned by Duncan Calvert
Last updated: Feb 06, 2024
2 min read
Contents

Long Paths in Windows

See Long Paths in Windows

Visual C++ Redistributables

Install the redistributables required for IHMC Matrix Library, IHMC Video Codecs, and ROS 2/Fast-RTPS.

Currently, those are comprised by:

Installing JDK (after Oracle shut down JDK 8 downloads)

See Java#Windows

Edit the Hosts file

  1. Run Notepad as Administrator.
  2. File > Open
  3. Set the file filter to "All Files (*.*)"
  4. Open C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    1. (For Git?) Open C:\Program Files\Git\etc\hosts

Remove a directory

rd /s /q <dir>

Log to a file

some command 1> log.txt 2>&1

Log to a file (but also to console)

To do this, download tee.exe below and add to your path.

some command 2>&1 | tee log.txt

Download → tee.exe

Building C++ Libraries (ROS2, OpenCV, other native libs)

On Windows, the C compiler is called msbuild, but even if installed, it with not be accessible from the terminal until you call the command below.

See http://wiki.ros.org/Installation/Windows for more details.

// Add MSBuild to your environment to build C++ and Visual projects
$ call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=amd64 -host_arch=amd64
$ msbuild -version

Recommended tweaks

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/show-file-extensions-in-windows

https://www.howtogeek.com/222057/how-to-remove-the-folders-from-%E2%80%9Cthis-pc%E2%80%9D-on-windows-10/ 

https://www.howtogeek.com/331361/how-to-remove-the-3d-objects-folder-from-this-pc-on-windows-10/

https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Windows-Install-Binary#installing-prerequisites

One drive enable/disable: https://www.howtogeek.com/225973/how-to-disable-onedrive-and-remove-it-from-file-explorer-on-windows-10/

Recommended Software

https://chocolatey.org/- Install tools and keep them up to date.

https://conemu.github.io/ - choco install -y conemu

https://github.com/jimradford/superputty

ConEmu Setup

ConEmu is a really useful terminal app for Windows when you need to manage Git configurations, run Gradle builds, build native code and more.

https://conemu.github.io/

Context Menu Integration

Integration - register ConEmu Here (top one)

← After right click in Win Explorer

Make folder name show in taskbar title

Edit {Shells::cmd} to point to your custom CmdInit.cmd (download a preconfigured one here)

Add to the default CmdInit.cmd for %%I in (.) do set CurrDirName=%%~nxI title %CurrDirName%

Download → CmdInit.cmd

Access the credentials manager

Some apps like Git can store their credentials in the Windows Credential Manager.

You can edit or remove any credentials you find there:

For more information on how Git decides where to store credentials: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitcredentials