QAston / shimzon

A tool for creating shims for windows executables.

Shimzon

A terminal utility that creates an executable shim, which wraps the shimmed application in a manner transparent for the runner.

Example use cases

1. Selectively adding executables to %PATH% without having to add entire directories which might contain other executables or DLLs
2. Making an alias of an executable which will run the executable with the specified configuration:
   • working directory
   • environment variable
   • arguments
3. Making aliases/wrappers for shell scripts which can run in any windows shell (msys/cygwin bash, cmd, powershell)
4. A workaround for Cygwin/Msys Bash-based shells which can't handle MSIX's reparse points

Related tools

• portable_env - dynamically update your %PATH% variable in any windows shell (bash, cmd, powershell)

Alternatives

• https://github.com/chocolatey/shimgen - restrictive license, closed source
• https://github.com/pfmoore/shimmy - depends on python, embeds executable's config in the binary, fewer config options for target executable
• https://github.com/lukesampson/shimexe - supports making bat/ps1 wrappers in addition to exe wrappers, fewer config options for target executable
• execution alias feature of MSIX - limited to applications using MSIX, the path is hardcoded to a single directory, doesn't work in cygin/msys bash
• making a symlink - doesn't work for executables which load dlls from directories of the executable, no config options for the target executable

Todos

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/bb756929(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN - handle uac better (run mt.exe -manifest "$(ProjectDir)$(TargetName).exe.manifest" -updateresource:"$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).exe;#1") to add manifest to an already existing exe file
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/224225/create-an-application-without-a-window - handle
• implement some of the arguments: https://github.com/chocolatey/shimgen#shim-arguments
• documentation
• error handling
• when neovim calls shimmed win32yank the window stays on for some reason
• shimzon sync which reads a .shim file in a directory:
  • .shim specifies where to take executables from, additional options per entry and whether to exclude something from shimming
  • when there's no .shim file it will create one
  • executable.shim file has an additional entry delete_on_sync=true which marks the shim for deletion when sync is called
• shimzon update
  • regenerate the executable, keep config, possibly apply config updates