[PowerToys Run] Add Suport for Commandline arguments in Program Plugin

[royvou]

Summary of the Pull Request

Add support for CommandLine arguments to the Program Plugin

PR Checklist

• Applies to Allow Command Line args in PowerToys Run #5724
• CLA signed. If not, go over here and sign the CLA
• Tests added/passed
• Requires documentation to be updated
• I've discussed this with core contributors already. If not checked, I'm ready to accept this work might be rejected in favor of a different grand plan. Issue number where discussion took place: #xxx

Info on Pull Request

Adds Support for CommandLine arguments to the Program Plugin.

Validation Steps Performed

• Part 1
  • Ran an UWP Program with commandline arguments
  • Validate it ran as expected
• Part 2
  • Ran an Win32 Program with commandline arguments
  • Validate it ran as expected
• Part 3
  • Added Unit Tests :)

[royvou]

The PR Is "Draft" because it needs some work to determine where the "Searchtext" should be resolved to the application / and where it would start passing the rest as arguments (E.g. Microsoft Edge is currently parsed as "Microsoft for application, Edge as arguments)).

Currently two options
"--" seperates search text with argumentlist
"-", "/" before a word (and not the first text, at least second or third)

[htcfreek]

What about doing it like windows search? Accept parameters only when the user enters the exe file name.

input	result
firefox.exe -profile	firefox.exe -profile
firefox -profile	/no result/
firefox	Mozilla Firefox

[royvou]

@htcfreek i don't think this would be great, since it will not be possible to launch the programs via their description (And do all UWP programs have an .exe? Open question))

Currently i implemented in the following way.

• If the search query contains a "--", use everything behind it as the queryarguments
• If the search query (starting at term 2) contains a - or / it will parse that + rest as query arguments
• Otherwise parse everything to the query and keep arguments empty.

Doing my own testing now to see how i like the feature (you can too) and will add tests for the parsers later :)

[htcfreek]

The PR Is "Draft" because it needs some work to determine where the "Searchtext" should be resolved to the application / and where it would start passing the rest as arguments (E.g. Microsoft Edge is currently parsed as "Microsoft for application, Edge as arguments)).

Currently two options
"--" seperates search text with argumentlist
"-", "/" before a word (and not the first text, at least second or third)

What does happen if input is edge.exe --inprivate or edge -- --inprivate?

[royvou]

Added the tests for it as well :)

Search	Command	arguments	Reason
edge.exe --inprivate	edge.exe --inprivate		No ' -- ' found and no single dash for arguments
edge -- --inprivate	edge	--inprivate	Found ' -- '

[htcfreek]

Added the tests for it as well :)

Search	Command	arguments	Reason
edge.exe --inprivate	edge.exe --inprivate		No ' -- ' found and no single dash for arguments
edge -- --inprivate	edge	--inprivate	Found ' -- '

I think the first case should be also possible because for example chrome uses double minus for parameters.

[royvou]

Added support for the doubledash as well (And updated the regex to make it easier to add even more but don't think that will be needed). I thought the doubledash was more of the Linux style of commandline seperators but seems it's also used on Windows, so a good suggestion 👍

[royvou]

This was a UTF8 files, but the other files in this project are UTF8 + BOM, seems like a sensible change to add?

[crutkas]

@royvou i know you were doing some stuff here a while ago, can we test this out?

[royvou]

@crutkas Yes! Latest commits were only merges to keep up with the latest master branch 😄

Tests should now also be ran by CI so that's awesome!

[htcfreek]

@royvou
Will we get this in for 0.21? Would be great if yes.

[royvou]

@htcfreek I think this all depends on how much / if any feedback we'll get on this feature 👍 but i assume will be close if everything goes great.
@crutkas were you able to try it out yet?

Yesterday i saw another merge conflict so i rebased it on top of that again.

[htcfreek]

@crutkas
Will we get this in for 0.21.0 or do we need more time for testing?

[royvou]

Rebased it on the latest master branch to resolve merge conflict on the csproj.

[htcfreek]

Can we merge this for 0.23?

@crutkas Have you tried this feature?

[ryanbodrug-microsoft]

I really like this feature! Nicely done.

[crutkas]

@royvou i was testing this due to an old issue i found, #4497.

For CMD, this works but for terminal, this pattern does not.

[htcfreek]

@royvou i was testing this due to an old issue i found, #4497.

For CMD, this works but for terminal, this pattern does not.

@crutkas
What command have you entered?
I think it musst be written like wt.exe -- ping github.com.

[royvou]

@crutkas i would need to inspect but since neither use a - - or - / with argument I would expect it to be part of the 'program' instead of the arguments.

[royvou]

Current IProgramArgumentParser implementation assumes every keyword you type in (keywords are seperated by a space e.g. Microsoft Edge) would be part of the "Program" so wt ping github.com is determined to be the complete search string, which in turn will cause no arguments to be passed in :).

does everything via shell so that's no problem (They Assume the first 'keyword' (You need to escape/quote it and it must be an exact match).

I think there's a few suggestions on how to handle it

• Suggest -- to users.
• Create a special IProgramArgumentParser which causes everything after .exe (so wt.exe ping 1.1.1.1) be picked up correctly.
• Create a special IProgramArgumentParser which special cases known terminals (WT/PWSH/Bash/cmd)
• Change logic to try to search programs in 'steps' (Would be hard to get right though)

Will update the bug you mentioned later, i think #2 / #3 are good to add.