Shim Execuable

Shim Execuable generates an executable 'shim' that will in turn execute another file relative to its location. This is an attempt at a drop in replacement for the RealDimensions Softwarem LLC's (RDS) shimgen.exe that comes with Chocolatey, however has various other possible uses. The shims and generator have evolved from kiennq's c++ shim implementation for Scoop (see the history section for more info)

Features

• ❗ Executes GUI applications without the brief console window display
• Free and Open Source
• Able to be freely used outside of "official" Chocolatey builds without a paid license.
• Faster shim creation
• Better support for crtl+c, as shim passes signal to child process
• Tries to terminate child processes if parent process is killed
• Consistent checksum for all shims
• No use of csc.exe by shimgen.exe
• Supports icons for the shims
• Compatible replacement of shimgen.exe (i.e., all documented command arguments are available)

To Do

• More testing
• Impliment changing of icon
• More testing
• Add support to embedding working directory into shim
• Add option to create Scoop-style shims (.shim file next to each shim .exe)

Using

1. Download a release or build it yourself
2. Run shim_exec.exe <source>

This will create an executable in the current directory named the same as <source> that will in turn execute it. More options can be viewed via shim_exec.exe -h. The shim itself has additional options and can be viewed using --shim-help.

You should be able to replace shimgen.exe in your Chocolately source code tree, however it hasn't been thoroughly tested and will probably void your warranty. The PowerShell script, ./tools/replace_shimgen.ps1, can be used to toggle this replacement.

Building

1. Get a copy of Visual Studio. Installing just the "Desktop Development w/ C++" should suffice however the minimum I installed was:
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Workload - Core Editor
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - Core Editor
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Workload - Native Desktop
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component Group - Native Desktop Core
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - Roslyn Compiler
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - Text Templating
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - VC Core IDE
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - VC Tools x86 x64
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - VC Redist 14 Latest
   • Microsoft Visual Studio Component - Windows 11 SDK 22000
   • Microsoft Component - MSBuild
2. Build using nmake. Visual Studio should have installed nmake however other flavors should be able to process the included makefile.

Motivation & History

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR Unlicense