Windows Support

[Exidex]

• Build & Run
• Package
• Applications Plugin. Looks like it requires considerable amount of unsafe Rust code because there are no safe wrappers for the SHGetKnownFolderItem & Co APIs

[Exidex]

Gave an attempt at implementing Application plugin for Windows, unfortunately couldn't make it work. Application plugin does 2 things: collects list of applications and launches one of those when use selects the item. I was able to successfully collect applications via SHGetKnownFolderItem on FOLDERID_AppsFolder and iterating over children of that folder where each child is an application. This does work but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to launch an application that would work for different types of those applications.

• ShellExecuteExW seems to work only for url links and exe, but only if PIDL doesn't contain KnownFolder GUID.
• IApplicationActivationManager::ActivateApplication only seems to work for AUMIDs (e.g. Microsoft.WindowsFeedbackHub_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App).
• IContextMenu::InvokeCommand just fails for unknown reason.

Here is a list of different types of PIDLs that I have found in AppsFolder:

• Microsoft.WindowsFeedbackHub_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App
• {F38BF404-1D43-42F2-9305-67DE0B28FC23}\\regedit.exe
• {7C5A40EF-A0FB-4BFC-874A-C0F2E0B9FA8E}\\Windows Kits\\10\\Shortcuts\\WindowsStoreAppDevCenterToolsDocumentation.url
• {1AC14E77-02E7-4E5D-B744-2EB1AE5198B7}\\WF.msc
• {1AC14E77-02E7-4E5D-B744-2EB1AE5198B7}\\appverif.chm
• MSEdge
• VisualStudio.f7b86bd3
• Microsoft.Windows.RemoteDesktop
• Microsoft.AutoGenerated.{C804BBA7-FA5F-CBF7-8B55-2096E5F972CB} - Resource Monitor
• https://nodejs.org/ - Node.js website

Application needs to be able to launch each of those, either in generic way or by handling each of those separately, but then arises the challenge of being able to reliably tell which of those types the PIDL is.

See a60fc0f for code

[Exidex]

After investigation, the proper way (which is used by PowerToys Run) seems to be to collect files with following extensions .lnk, .url, .exe and .appref-ms in following folders: FOLDERID_Desktop, FOLDERID_PublicDesktop, FOLDERID_StartMenu, FOLDERID_CommonStartMenu. Then extract icon using one of ExtractIconExW, ExtractAssociatedIconExW, SHGetFileInfoW (there is probably more) as close to ~40px as possible and convert to png. Not yet sure about actually executing.

See for some of that

• https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/src/modules/launcher/Plugins/Microsoft.Plugin.Program/Storage/Win32ProgramRepository.cs
• https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/main/src/modules/launcher/Plugins/Microsoft.Plugin.Program/Programs/Win32Program.cs#L634

But windows api is testing my sanity so I'll leave it for another time