DesktopShell

Created in Visual Studio 2017

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This program serves as a replacement of desktop shortcuts and batch files, and an extension to the Windows start menu.

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Setup

Before running DesktopShell, you need to configure environment variables for secure operation. See ENVIRONMENT_SETUP.md for detailed instructions.

Environment variables (overview)

• DESKTOPSHELL_PASSPHRASE (required): TCP remote command passphrase.
• DESKTOPSHELL_TCP_TLS (optional): set to 1 to enable TLS for TCP remote commands.
• DESKTOPSHELL_TCP_TLS_PFX / DESKTOPSHELL_TCP_TLS_PFX_PASSWORD (optional): server certificate for TLS.
• DESKTOPSHELL_TCP_TLS_THUMBPRINT (optional): client-side pin for self-signed certs.
• DESKTOPSHELL_QUEUE_ENABLED (optional): set to 1 to enable HTTPS queue fallback.
• DESKTOPSHELL_QUEUE_BASEURL (optional): queue API base URL (defaults to https://queue.dlamanna.com).
• DESKTOPSHELL_QUEUE_KEY_B64 (optional): Base64-encoded AES key for queue message encryption.
• DESKTOPSHELL_CF_ACCESS_CLIENT_ID / DESKTOPSHELL_CF_ACCESS_CLIENT_SECRET (required if queue enabled): Cloudflare Access service token credentials.

Linux Harness Commands

When running in a sandboxed Linux harness (where the repo path is not writable), use these wrappers instead of calling dotnet directly:

# Test wrapper (writes obj/bin/results under /tmp/desktopshell-harness)
./scripts/test-harness-linux.sh

# Publish wrapper for win-x64 single-file
./scripts/publish-win-x64-singlefile-harness-linux.sh

Notes:

• Wrappers force BaseIntermediateOutputPath and BaseOutputPath into /tmp.
• Wrappers set EnableWindowsTargeting=true and clear/override fallback package behavior.
• If package restore is blocked by network restrictions and required packages are missing from cache, restore/publish can still fail.
• DesktopShell.Tests targets net8.0-windows; test execution itself may still require Windows behavior depending on test content.

This is mostly meant as a code example since many of the features of this program launch other programs I coded which are not bundled in this repository. If you want to try it anyways, add your regular expression, program executable path, and commandline arguments in separate lines in the shortcuts.txt file. Add one line spacing between statements, and if no commandline arguments are required, put a dash on the third line. To use your new regex either re-open the DesktopShell.exe program or type the command "rescan".

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Example:

(^txt$){1}
C:\notepad.exe
"C:\Program Files (x86)\testfile.txt"
C:\notepad.exe
"C:\Program Files (x86)\testfile2.txt"

(^img$){1}
C:\paint.exe
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