ExQueues Shell Queue (queue file commands)

It was suggested by Leo Davidson that I post here about my tool, ExQueues. An information page is located at shellqueue.sourceforge.net but basically it is a GPL application that works with Directory Opus (and Windows Explorer). It allows a user to 'queue up' a bunch of file operations for sequential processing, with some built-in features for certain file types. File operations may be queued up at any time, and may be reordered. Processing them sequentially reduces system resources (memory and disk thrashing).

In particular, this application is useful for large or multiple PAR2 (Quickpar) based repair operations, and RAR extractions.

Drag and Drop is supported in Directory Opus through the use of the DDE interface in DO. Instructions can be found at the url linked above. Context menus are also supported by right clicking.

Hope someone finds this useful, or that someday a similar feature makes it into Directory Opus built-in. :slight_smile:

A new version, 0.2 has been released that fixed some problems with Windows Explorer Context menus (they were fine in DOpus). Also added PAR2 Queued creation.

New Version 0.3 Has The Following Bug Fixes And Enhancements

  • By popular request, special folder destinations have been added: Here, Browse, & Derived Subfolder. Derived Subfolder is the only one that may need a little explanation: It chooses the current folder plus the root of the filename as the destination folder. For example, Repair Then Extract->Derived Subfolder on a file called 'c:\folder\MyFile.par2', would extract the files to a subfolder called 'c:\folder\MyFile'. Please note that you may only select one file for processing at a time when using these special folders. Ie., you can't select 5 different par2 sets for repair then extract to 'Here'.
  • Repair then Move works properly. It no longer moves the original selected file, it moves the files that were repaired.
  • Error messages are now displayed for failed repairs and extractions (unrar).
  • Deletion Confirmation is now handled properly. If you had disabled it in your Recycle Bin because of ExQueues, please remember to re-enable it.
  • Removed ace and zip extensions until they are supported for extraction to prevent errors.
  • Hopefully version 0.4 will contain an all new PAR2 DLL I am working on for much tighter integration and getting rid of the par2.exe dependency. I will also try and write this DLL in such a way as it may be useful for other applications needing to repair par/par2 archives. par version 1 files should be supported if/when I get this finished as well.
  • Updated these docs with new Subversion version control information, as well as correcting an inadvertent error in the explanation of how to do the Directory Opus DDE configuration. If you had tried the DDE instructions before without success, please try them again with the corrected instructions.

Hi,

this seems to be a nice project. But I am not sure, whether I understood correctly. In the introduction to it you write:

"ExQueues Shell Queue is an application that allows a user to 'queue up' various file operations [...]
In particular, multiple sequential PAR2 repairs & RAR extractions[...]"

Reading the docs I also see a focus on the PAR2 & RAR stuff, so I got the expression, that this is all that is possible ?

It does not run on localized Windows systems.
A dialog pops up, that it can't find:

%userprofile%\Application Data\ExQueues\fobar.xml

That would be
%userprofile%\Anwendungsdaten\ExQueues\foobar.xml

Creating "Application Data" manually does not help either.

Last but not least: It would be nice to have this integrated into Dopus, rather than having a stand-alone application. So everything is in one place and the feature comes as a plug-in feature to Dopus (since that is where the filemanagement happens). Though, it seems the current SDK for VFS does not allow this (adding entries to the lister, etc.)

I also have a localised WinXP (German)

I'm working with TotalCommander and while testing DOpus I found that there are no move/copy queues in DOpus.
So I tried ExQueues.
I installed ExQueues, created the Application Data Folder and moved the ExQueues subfolder into it. Now ExQueues doesn't complain about a missing config.xml file anymore.
But whenever I want to move folders or files in DirectoryOpus I get the following error messages:

When moving files:
failed with error 183: A file cannot be created if it already exists.
So ExQueues doesn't allow overwriting files, right?

When moving folders:
failed with error 5: access denied

Is anyone working on ...or trying to work out a similar solution like Exqueues. This tool is indispensable for my daily file manipulations, unfortunately it does not work even with or without Directory Opus.

A similar working solution like this by anyone would be be a great contribution.

Thanks.

Are you using it on Windows 7 x86? Or on x64 (any)? Just tried on Windows 7 x86 myself and it is giving an error when starting. And x64 is known not to work because 32 bit Windows Shell Extensions won't run. Basically the app needs to be rewritten in C# or similar, taking advantage of the 5 years of progress...but shell extensions are so arcane and finicky, that I haven't had the time or the courage to dig back into it.

One thing I was thinking about doing, was replacing 'unrar.exe' with 7zip, which would handle many other extraction types presumably, assuming the command line version supports unrar, unzip, etc.

FWIW, if it's going to stay as a shell extension, using C# is a bad idea (unless it's one of the few shell extension types which can run out-of-process):

blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archi ... 17290.aspx