System Environment Variable for Ultra Engine

[reepblue]

Can the installer create a System Environment Variable for where Ultra Engine is installed? I think this will help make installing tools and sharing C++ projects easier if we can just reference something like %ULTRAENGINEPATH% in batch scripts or the PropertiesSheet.props file. 

This is now more important as there's the Steam install and the standalone version. 

[Josh]

I have considered this, but it either requires admin permissions or requires the user to manually add the key, so I am hesitant to start building anything on this.

[Josh]

Okay, I figured out how to add this into the installer with Inno setup:

[Setup]
ChangesEnvironment=yes

[Registry]
Root: HKLM; Subkey: "System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment"; ValueType: string; ValueName: "ULTRAENGINE"; ValueData: "{app}"

 

[Josh]

With the env variable set, you can replace propertysheet.props with this, and it does actually work:
 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <ImportGroup Label="PropertySheets" />
  <PropertyGroup Label="UserMacros">
    <UltraEnginePath>$(ULTRAENGINE)</UltraEnginePath>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <PropertyGroup />
  <ItemDefinitionGroup />
  <ItemGroup>
    <BuildMacro Include="UltraEnginePath">
      <Value>$(UltraEnginePath)</Value>
      <EnvironmentVariable>true</EnvironmentVariable>
    </BuildMacro>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

 

[Josh]

If you open the vcxproj in a text editor and do a search and replace to replace "$(UltraEnginePath)" with "$(ULTRAENGINE)" then you can get rid of the propertysheet.props file and Visual Studio will be able to compile using the env variable that is set.

[Josh]

Looks like this can be used in a bat to set a value. I think set is user and setx is system:
setx /m ULTRAENGINE "C:\Program Files\Ultra Engine"

[Josh]

Okay, this is implemented now. The environment variable will be set when a C++ project is created, only if it does not already exist.

The C++ project template is updated to use the env var and the property sheets file is removed. This will not affect your existing projects.