STLThumbWindows

This is the Windows shell extension and Windows installer for stl-thumb.

Build Instructions

Requirements

• Rust
• Visual Studio 2017
• WiX Toolset
• WiX Toolset Visual Studio 2017 Extension

Steps

1. In the stl-thumb folder, run cargo build --release. This is necessary since Visual Studio does not (yet) support Rust projects.
2. Open STLThumbWindows.sln in Visual Studio and build the solution. The shell extension .dll will be in the x64 folder. The installer package will be in STLThumbSetupBundle\bin.

Debugging

Compile the extension

1. In the stl-thumb folder, run cargo build --release.
2. In Visual Studio, build the solution in Debug configuration.
3. Copy STLThumbWindows\stl-thumb\target\release\stl-thumb.exe to STLThumbWindows\x64\Debug\.

Register extension with the Windows shell

4. Uninstall stl-thumb if it is installed.
5. Open a command prompt as administrator and navigate to STLThumbWindows\x64\Debug\.
6. Run regsvr32.exe STLThumbWinShellExtension.dll.
7. Use Regedit to add this registry key: Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{AF07F051-9D08-44A7-8C63-9296ADFEDDD7}\DisableProcessIsolation=REG_DWORD:1. This forces the extension to run in-process in explorer.exe instead of in it's own process.

Attach the debugger to Windows Explorer

8. In Visual Studio, go to Debug > Attach to Process... and choose explorer.exe.
9. Create or edit an STL file, causing a new thumbnail to be generated.

The output of stl-thumb.exe will be logged to the file out.log. Be aware that when you hit a breakpoint the Windows shell will freeze, making the desktop and taskbar unresponsive.