Author Archives: SiZiOUS

Happy New Year ’21!

Using VMware & Docker? Read this!

I’m using VMware Workstation (in my case, Workstation 15.5.1) on my Windows 10 computer and I wanted to install Docker. After installing Docker and enabling some Windows features, e.g. Hyper-V, I was able to use it properly.

But now, when I try to run a VM in Workstation, the following message is displayed:

VMware Workstation and Device/Credential Guard are not compatible.
VMware Workstation can be run after disabling Device/Credential Guard.
Please visit http://www.vmware.com/go/turnoff_CG_DG for more details.

VMware Workstation and Device/Credential Guard are not compatible.

VMware Workstation can be run after disabling Device/Credential Guard.

Please visit http://www.vmware.com/go/turnoff_CG_DG for more details.

This strange message is linked to Hyper-V. VMware products can’t be used if Hyper-V is installed. At the same time, Docker needs Hyper-V to run!

The only option you have to allow a VM to start is to disable Hyper-V. So I tried to disable the feature in Windows but this isn’t sufficient! You need to change a parameter in the boot registry too.

The issue is, if you disable Hyper-V, Docker will not run! So you have a choice to make here. Everytime you want to use Docker, you have to enable Hyper-V; and if you want to use VMware products, you have to disable Hyper-V… Find below the commands to execute in both cases.

Disabling Hyper-V: Use VMware products

Open a PowerShell in Administrator mode then type:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

1 2	bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

Then restart. Now VMware products (Player or Workstation) may run!

Enabling Hyper-V: Use Docker

Now if you want to use Docker, you have to enable again Hyper-V. Open a PowerShell in Administrator mode then type:

bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

1 2	bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

Then restart. Docker may now be used but not VMware products.

Final note

This situation will not stay like this, but for now it’s the only workaround you have. The issue is under investigation.

Happy New Year ’20!

I just want to wish you a happy new year 2020! 🙂

A new decade was now started and the Dreamcast scene is almost alive, and that’s a pleasure to see that!

I’ve not posted so much things here but don’t worry, speaking about my hobbies, I’m working on the coming DreamSDK R3 package, but I’m really slow because as you might know, so much work for little free time…

In the meantime, see you around!

How to set Google Chrome by default on Lubuntu 19.04

Recently I wanted to set Google Chrome by default on my fresh Lubuntu 19.04 VM and despite the presence of the Make Google Chrome as default browser button, it never works: Firefox remains the default browser.

I wanted to setup Google Chrome by default without uninstalling Mozilla Firefox as I use both browsers. Open a Terminal then do the following:

nano ~/.config/lxqt/session.conf

Change the BROWSER variable to /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable as shown below. Save the changes.

Type: sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser then choose the /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable entry in manual mode (2 in the screenshot below).

Type: sudo update-alternatives --config gnome-www-browser. Do the same as above.

Type the following commands:

sudo xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop
sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/https
sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop text/html

sudo xdg-settings set default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop

sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/http

sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

sudo xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop text/html

Then restart the computer (sudo reboot). Check now if the $BROWSER variable is OK by typing echo $BROWSER:

Then now, when checking Firefox, it should says that the browser isn’t the default, and Google Chrome shouldn’t complain!

DreamSDK R2 was released in March ’19

I totally forgot to post here, but I’ve recently released the DreamSDK R2 package!

A lot of improvements and changes are included in this release, like:

Full Code::Blocks IDE integration, including debugging on the real hardware, directly from the IDE!
DreamSDK Manager was redesigned and improved a lot.
A lot of new tools are included now, like makedisc, allowing you to create CD releases of your programs.
The Help content was improved a lot and it’s now available online (and of course, it’s still available in the package too).
A lot of other things that you will find out by yourself!

For those who don’t know what is DreamSDK, it’s a package which contains everything you need to develop for the Sega Dreamcast video game console on Microsoft Windows. This isn’t a ready-to-use high level framework like Unity, it’s a low-level SDK which is based on KallistiOS (KOS). So you’ll need to learn Dreamcast programming with KOS and learn C/C++ programming languages.

Download DreamSDK R2.

Happy New Year ’19!

I just want to wish you a happy new year 2019! 🙂

May the Dreamcast be with you this year!

DreamSDK R1 is released

So after almost 2 months of intensive work, I’m really happy to announce you that my latest project is done: DreamSDK R1 is out.

DreamSDK is a modern, ready-to-use environment for the Sega Dreamcast development designed for the Microsoft Windows platform.

Main features are:

Fast & easy to install: just double-click on the setup file and let the program install & configure everything for you.
Ready to use: All the required toolchains (for the SuperH & Yamaha AICA) are already prebuilt and ready-to-use.
Lightweight: Thanks to the MinGW/MSYS environment, the space used on the disk is minimal.
Configurable & upgradable: With the included DreamSDK Manager tool, manage DreamSDK components really easily.
Respectful of the standards: DreamSDK is 100% compliant with the KallistiOS standards and documentation.

This package has a very different approach comparing to the others packages of this kind. The major difference is that KallistiOS is not included: instead it’s downloaded/installed from DreamSDK Manager, which is a tool part of this package. This will keep up-to-date your installation and will allow DreamSDK always be usable, as only the toolchains (SuperH & Yamaha AICA) are included (which don’t changes often). In clear, doing so will give you the possibility to update KallistiOS directly from the DreamSDK environment.

Please also note that I’m using the official KallistiOS repositories (kos and kos-ports) and not my repositories (which contains various fixes on the build systems). The exception is dcload-serial and dcload-ip: I’m using my repositories as official ones will not compile on MinGW/MSYS without my fixes.

DreamSDK was built to be the greatest environment for Sega Dreamcast development on Microsoft Windows. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much I enjoyed to make this package.

Download DreamSDK.

Note: This package contains only free & open source tools and libraries.

My GitHub account was updated!

As I stated on Twitter, I’ve released all the source codes of all my tools I’ve published through years. Most of them are written in Pascal Object/Delphi, but some of them are written in C/C++.

All these tools were originally published almost 15 years ago, so a lot of them will not work on modern OS like Windows 10.

Maybe I’ll try to adapt/convert them for newer OS, maybe I won’t, who’s knows? 🙂

Click here to access to my GitHub account.

Lars Olsson mirror is available!

I’ve just a made a mirror of the excellent Dreamcast site run by Lars Olsson.

You can find it here.

Apache Maven: How to extract XML node values from the pom.xml (in pure batch!)

If you are a Java developer you certainly know Apache Maven, which is (more or less) a Make equivalent for the Java world.

Some days ago I needed to automatically extract some values from the pom.xml file to automatize some operations. For example, I wanted to extract the values of the groupId, artifactId and version nodes from a Maven project, i.e. from the pom.xml file.

I finally created a pure Windows batch solution in order to do that, I called this little utility: POM Tool.

Here is the source code of it:

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set POM_TOOL_VERSION=20180914

rem Parameters
set MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG=%1
set MAVEN_POM_FILE=pom.xml
if "%2" neq "" set MAVEN_POM_FILE=%2

rem Check input parameters
if "%MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%"=="" goto help
if "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%"=="" goto error_pom_not_found
if not exist %MAVEN_POM_FILE% goto error_pom_not_found

rem Compute start/end positions to extract the value from the XML tag
call:strlen %MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%
set /a TAG_BEGIN=%_strlen% + 2
set /a TAG_END=(%TAG_BEGIN% + 1) * -1

rem Perform the XML tag value extraction
call:extractxml %MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG% %TAG_BEGIN% %TAG_END%
if "%_extractxml%"=="" goto error_extraction_failed
echo %_extractxml%
goto:eof

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

rem ---
rem Display help message
rem ---
:help
call:banner
echo Usage: %~n0 ^&lt;xml_tag^&gt; [pom_file]
echo.
echo Example: %~n0 version - will return artifact version
echo          %~n0 groupId - will return artifact groupId
goto:eof

rem ---
rem Error: The requested tag was not found
rem ---
:error_extraction_failed
call:banner
echo Error: The tag "%MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%" wasn't found in the "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%" file.
goto:eof

rem ---
rem Error: The Maven POM file wasn't found
rem ---
:error_pom_not_found
call:banner
echo Error: The "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%" file wasn't found.
goto:eof

rem ---
rem Function: banner
rem Used to display the tool banner
rem ---
:banner
echo POM Tool - Ver. %POM_TOOL_VERSION%
echo.
goto:eof

rem ---
rem Function: extractxml 
rem Used to parse %MAVEN_POM_FILE% for extracting tags value.
rem Usage: call:extractxml %param% where %param% is the tag to search.
rem ---
:extractxml
setlocal
set _extracted_xml_result=
set _token=^&lt;%~1^&gt;
set _begin=%~2
set _end=%~3
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (%MAVEN_POM_FILE%) do (
	set row=%%a
	if /i "!row:%_token%=!"=="!row!" (echo NOP &gt; nul) else (
		set _extracted_xml_result=!row!
		if /i "!_extracted_xml_result!" neq "" goto extractxml_endloop
	)
)
:extractxml_endloop
set "_final=%_extracted_xml_result%"
if "%_final%" neq "" call set _final=%%_final:~%_begin%,%_end%%%
(endlocal
	if "%~1" neq "" set "_extractxml=%_final%"
)
goto:eof

rem ---
rem Function: strlen
rem Get the length of a string
rem Thanks to: SS64 (https://ss64.com/nt/syntax-strlen.html)
rem ---
:strlen
setlocal
set _str=%~1

rem Remove any quotes
set _str=%_str:"=%

rem Test if empty
if not defined _str echo endlocal &amp; set _strlen=0&amp;goto:eof

set MAX_STRING_LENGTH=256
for /l %%g in (0,1,!MAX_STRING_LENGTH!) do (
	REM extract one character
	set "_char=!_str:~%%g,1!"
	REM if _char is empty we are at the end of the string
	if not defined _char endlocal &amp; set _strlen=%%g&amp; goto:eof
)
goto:eof

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@echo off

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion

set POM_TOOL_VERSION=20180914

rem Parameters

set MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG=%1

set MAVEN_POM_FILE=pom.xml

if "%2" neq "" set MAVEN_POM_FILE=%2

rem Check input parameters

if "%MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%"=="" goto help

if "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%"=="" goto error_pom_not_found

if not exist %MAVEN_POM_FILE% goto error_pom_not_found

rem Compute start/end positions to extract the value from the XML tag

call:strlen %MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%

set /a TAG_BEGIN=%_strlen% + 2

set /a TAG_END=(%TAG_BEGIN% + 1) * -1

rem Perform the XML tag value extraction

call:extractxml %MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG% %TAG_BEGIN% %TAG_END%

if "%_extractxml%"=="" goto error_extraction_failed

echo %_extractxml%

goto:eof

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

rem ---

rem Display help message

rem ---

:help

call:banner

echo Usage: %~n0 ^<xml_tag^> [pom_file]

echo.

echo Example: %~n0 version - will return artifact version

echo %~n0 groupId - will return artifact groupId

goto:eof

rem ---

rem Error: The requested tag was not found

rem ---

:error_extraction_failed

call:banner

echo Error: The tag "%MAVEN_POM_INPUT_TAG%" wasn't found in the "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%" file.

goto:eof

rem ---

rem Error: The Maven POM file wasn't found

rem ---

:error_pom_not_found

call:banner

echo Error: The "%MAVEN_POM_FILE%" file wasn't found.

goto:eof

rem ---

rem Function: banner

rem Used to display the tool banner

rem ---

:banner

echo POM Tool - Ver. %POM_TOOL_VERSION%

echo.

goto:eof

rem ---

rem Function: extractxml

rem Used to parse %MAVEN_POM_FILE% for extracting tags value.

rem Usage: call:extractxml %param% where %param% is the tag to search.

rem ---

:extractxml

setlocal

set _extracted_xml_result=

set _token=^<%~1^>

set _begin=%~2

set _end=%~3

for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (%MAVEN_POM_FILE%) do (

set row=%%a

if /i "!row:%_token%=!"=="!row!" (echo NOP > nul) else (

set _extracted_xml_result=!row!

if /i "!_extracted_xml_result!" neq "" goto extractxml_endloop

)

:extractxml_endloop

set "_final=%_extracted_xml_result%"

if "%_final%" neq "" call set _final=%%_final:~%_begin%,%_end%%%

(endlocal

if "%~1" neq "" set "_extractxml=%_final%"

)

goto:eof

rem ---

rem Function: strlen

rem Get the length of a string

rem Thanks to: SS64 (https://ss64.com/nt/syntax-strlen.html)

rem ---

:strlen

setlocal

set _str=%~1

rem Remove any quotes

set _str=%_str:"=%

rem Test if empty

if not defined _str echo endlocal & set _strlen=0&goto:eof

set MAX_STRING_LENGTH=256

for /l %%g in (0,1,!MAX_STRING_LENGTH!) do (

REM extract one character

set "_char=!_str:~%%g,1!"

REM if _char is empty we are at the end of the string

if not defined _char endlocal & set _strlen=%%g& goto:eof

)

goto:eof

Just copy-paste that source code into a new file and call the file pomtool.cmd.

The usage is pretty simple:

pomtool artifactId c:\temp\my-maven-project\pom.xml

1	pomtool artifactId c:\temp\my-maven-project\pom.xml

This will give you the value of the artifactId node for the c:\temp\my-maven-project\pom.xml file!

Of course you can include a call to the POM Tool in another batch file, for example:

@echo off
for /f "tokens=*" %%i in ('pomtool description c:\my\project\pom.xml') do set "PROJECT_NAME=%%i"
echo %PROJECT_NAME%
pause

@echo off

for /f "tokens=*" %%i in ('pomtool description c:\my\project\pom.xml') do set "PROJECT_NAME=%%i"

echo %PROJECT_NAME%

pause

In that way, the %PROJECT_NAME% variable in your batch will have the output of the POM Tool utility, in that example the content of the description node! 🙂

Don’t hesitate to comments if you have any question! 🙂