End-User | Network Administrator | Developer

This subsection of the documentation is aimed at network administrators looking to preinstall or remotely install Path Copy Copy on their users' computer. The Path Copy Copy installer supports several command-line options to do so, as well as to preconfigure default options.

Network installation

The Path Copy Copy setup application has been built using Inno Setup and as such it supports all the standard Inno Setup command-line parameters. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the parameters that can be useful to a network administrator. For the complete list of options please refer to the Inno Setup website. A combination of these command-line options should probably be sufficient for typical network installations.

Setting default options

Path Copy Copy is configurable via its Settings application (see the End-User tab) and saves its settings in the Windows registry. When it needs a value for a setting, it first looks in the user's own registry key and if no value is found, it looks in a global registry key that applies to all users on the computer (in other, more technical words, it looks in HKEY_CURRENT_USER first, then in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE). The Path Copy Copy setup allows you to configure default values for any setting by using command-line parameters: Each setting in Path Copy Copy has its own registry value name. Here is a list of all available values, their data types, accepted values and purpose.

Value name Data type Possible values Purpose
AddQuotes REG_DWORD 0 (no) or 1 (yes) If set to 1, will cause Path Copy Copy to surround all copied paths with quotes (").
UseHiddenShares REG_DWORD 0 (no) or 1 (yes) If set to 1, Path Copy Copy will use hidden shares when looking for UNC paths (see End-User tab).
AlwaysShowSubmenu REG_DWORD 0 (no) or 1 (yes) If set to 0, user will have to hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on a file to get the submenu with all commands.
PluginsInMainMenu REG_SZ Comma-separated list of plugin IDs (see below) IDs of the commands (or plugins) that will be shown directly in the main contextual menu (see End-User tab).
PluginsNotInSubmenu REG_SZ Comma-separated list of plugin IDs IDs of plugins that will not be shown in the submenu.
KeyLock REG_DWORD 0 (unlocked) or 1 (locked) If set to 1, will prevent the user from changing the settings. The Settings menu item will not show up in the submenu and launching the Settings application by hand will give an error message.

Some values refer to specific commands. These are called plugins in Path Copy Copy speech. Each command seen in the menu has an internal plugin ID. The following table lists all plugins provided by default along with their IDs.

Command Plugin ID
Short Name {C8757DCA-1BA8-48d0-8145-B93BBB9237AF}
Long Name {3A42B5C6-72D6-4a8a-BA44-014FA64AA11A}
Short Path {93B362D1-2B13-467a-B618-6784F24F3BA1}
Long Path {331A3B60-AF49-44f4-B30D-56ADFF6D25E8}
Short Parent Folder Path {0929538B-5F52-4480-9902-2BBEC9C84905}
Long Parent Folder Path {349939D7-780F-43fd-A98E-83D9ADD44E22}
Short UNC Path {891F9E3E-0B70-49fd-A86C-53B21C6193C7}
Long UNC Path {EA24BCC3-35F5-46b9-A2A5-A12A0AED2D28}
Short UNC Parent Folder Path {73188FB3-8E14-409c-95EF-BA608FDC1274}
Long UNC Parent Folder Path {E2C942AC-917C-4aee-A867-8F6AB960BA76}
Internet Path {8F2ADCCC-9693-407d-9300-FCCB9A12B982}
Unix Path {5B5DA5CB-3284-45a9-A1E5-4D6B03107924}
Cygwin Path {CD50DCE3-9A5C-4adf-B552-1741361567D6}

One switch allows you to pre-install some custom commands (see End-User tab) on the computer. These are called pipeline plugins in Path Copy Copy speech. Since their serialization is a bit complex, the easiest way to do it is to create the custom command on your computer and go in the registry to fetch the values needed to pass to the setup exe. Custom commands are stored in the SOFTWARE\clechasseur\PathCopyCopy\PipelinePlugins key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The picture below shows you the various parts needed to create the setup command-line switch.

NetworkAdmin_DefaultOptions_PipelinePluginInRegistry.png

Please note that if you add custom commands via the setup, their IDs can also be used for any configuration value that takes a plugin ID, such as PluginsInMainMenu.

Questions? Issues?

This concludes the Network Administrator documentation for Path Copy Copy. If you have a question regarding any aspect of the software, you can post in the Discussions section. If something is not working as documented, do not hesitate to enter a work item in the Issue Tracker.


Last updated for version 9.2