Live data from Hacker News

Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

github.com

21–30 of 50 posts

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#22
post #8

Wow, this is the largest batchfile I've ever seen! And I thought my 200-ish line one from high school was pushing it. Honestly huge respect for having the dedication to go this far with batch. I knew about the pseudo-function-calling features and a little bit of the weird syntax, but just skimming there's a lot of stuff in here I haven't seen before. Usually people saying "X in Y KiB" are doing some crazy linker shen…

"Windows To Go" is the official name for a former Windows feature.

Writing a Batch script of any length, let alone 3085 lines, is completely insane with PowerShell being part of the default install.

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#23
post #8

Wow, this is the largest batchfile I've ever seen! And I thought my 200-ish line one from high school was pushing it. Honestly huge respect for having the dedication to go this far with batch. I knew about the pseudo-function-calling features and a little bit of the weird syntax, but just skimming there's a lot of stuff in here I haven't seen before. Usually people saying "X in Y KiB" are doing some crazy linker shen…

"Windows To Go" is the official name for a former Windows feature. Writing a Batch script of any length, let alone 3085 lines, is completely insane with PowerShell being part of the default install.

I write tools for video game studios occasionally. You can’t double click a ps1 script and have it run, and you need to change the execution policy for powershell scripts to run. Those two hurdles for non technical people mean that we still write batch scripts

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows To Go" is the official name for a former Windows feature. Writing a Batch script of any length, let alone 3085 lines, is completely insane with PowerShell being part of the default install.

I write tools for video game studios occasionally. You can’t double click a ps1 script and have it run, and you need to change the execution policy for powershell scripts to run. Those two hurdles for non technical people mean that we still write batch scripts

But you can run .ps1 from .bat that you doubleclick.

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#27
post #19
post #8

Wow, this is the largest batchfile I've ever seen! And I thought my 200-ish line one from high school was pushing it. Honestly huge respect for having the dedication to go this far with batch. I knew about the pseudo-function-calling features and a little bit of the weird syntax, but just skimming there's a lot of stuff in here I haven't seen before. Usually people saying "X in Y KiB" are doing some crazy linker shen…

Speaking of large batch files, if anyone has ever softmodded a Wii, there is a good chance you used ModMii, which is by far the largest batch program I've seen. The main script [1] is a batch file that clocks in at over a megabyte. I used to be pretty into the Wii modding scene and remember talking with the author of that script about random batch things a few times. I can't imagine maintaining a file that big. [1] h…

I once knew a (very old) old accounting system that had to work around a 64kB limit and therefor used a programmatically generated set of many hundreds batch files batch files calling each other (not containing the program logic of course). But each of them was less than 100 lines long.

But 27 kLOC for the WII thing or 3 kLOC for the recovery tool which even looks a bit more convoluted then the WII thing sounds interesting to maintain. On the other hand, if it works, no dependencies no 200 MB binary blob.

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write tools for video game studios occasionally. You can’t double click a ps1 script and have it run, and you need to change the execution policy for powershell scripts to run. Those two hurdles for non technical people mean that we still write batch scripts

But you can run .ps1 from .bat that you doubleclick.

That still has the same issue. Powershell will refuse to run scripts that are not signed by default.

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#29
post #19
post #8

Wow, this is the largest batchfile I've ever seen! And I thought my 200-ish line one from high school was pushing it. Honestly huge respect for having the dedication to go this far with batch. I knew about the pseudo-function-calling features and a little bit of the weird syntax, but just skimming there's a lot of stuff in here I haven't seen before. Usually people saying "X in Y KiB" are doing some crazy linker shen…

Speaking of large batch files, if anyone has ever softmodded a Wii, there is a good chance you used ModMii, which is by far the largest batch program I've seen. The main script [1] is a batch file that clocks in at over a megabyte. I used to be pretty into the Wii modding scene and remember talking with the author of that script about random batch things a few times. I can't imagine maintaining a file that big. [1] h…

Don't forget that it even has a GUI made with Wizard's Apprentice which is created and controlled by a similar large batch file: https://github.com/modmii/modmii.github.io/blob/master/Suppo... :D

Re: Windows recovery environment and bootable USB creator in 200kb

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can run .ps1 from .bat that you doubleclick.

That still has the same issue. Powershell will refuse to run scripts that are not signed by default.

You can use the -ExecutionPolicy argument to get around that.

It's not a security boundary, just something to stop users accidentally opening an email attachment like they will with bat/vbs.

Post reply on HN