1. Create VHD from Hyper-V manager or Disk Management in Server Manager
2. Attach the VHD, initialize with MBR, create volume (format with NTFS and mount to X:\), set active
3. Launch EasyBCD, in "Bootloader Setup" tab, choose correct Partition, and install BCD (a.k.a. PBR, Partition Boot Record)
4. At this stage the newly installed BCD is still empty. Now click "Add New Entry" in EasyBCD with default settings to add a default entry
5. Deploy a OS into the VHD: imagex /apply <path to install.wim> <index of image> X:\
6. Detach the VHD

Now the VHD is a sysprep'ed, bootable, and absolutely clean VHD.

Usually it is believed that NTFS directory junctions are not allowed to link network shared folders.

Refer to this MSDN article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365006%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

However here is a easy workaround:

1. Create a symbolic link to the network shared folder
2. Create directory junction to the symbolic link
3. Done.

The link created in step 2 looks like a directory junction, but behaves like a symbolic link.

1. Download clonezilla and gparted live CD
2. Create a new VDI with bigger size, attach it to the VM, boot the VM with clonezilla live CD
3. Clone the old VDI to new VDI
4. Detach old VDI (don't delete it before new VDI is verified to work)
6. Boot the VM with gparted live CD, delete swap and extended partition, expand the primary partition, and then recreate the extended and swap partition
7. Remove CD and boot the VM, verify if it works
8. Delete old VDI

BTW, for Virtual Box shared folders:

sudo mount -t vboxsf share_name /path/to/mount

To mount it permanently, append a line to /etc/init.d/rc.local with above command.

Today I spent 5+ hours in this problem so I think it is worth to write down my experience here...

I just started to play with Linux and the open source C++ IDE CodeLite. The IDE and wxWidgets library looks great, and the Linux platform is becoming more and more user friendly today. So I tried to build an application with CodeLite (2.1.3584) in Ubuntu (9.10).

I tried to build a wxWidgets application in Windows before. According to this article the thing is quite easy. However, I didn't expect it is so difficult to do the same thing in Linux (simply because I can't find a similar article on Internet). I googled again and again but didn't find much stuff useful.

Here is instructions I used:

1. Install wxWidgets package: sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.8-dev

2. Install build essentials package: sudo apt-get install build-essential

3. Create a link for "/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx" to "/usr/include/wx", or copy the directory over

4. Create a link for "/usr/lib/wx/include/gtk2-unicode-release-2.8/wx/setup.h" to "/usr/include/wx/setup.h", or copy the file over

5. Open CodeLite IDE, create a project using wxWidgets template

6. Modify the default project settings to:
complier options: -g;$(shell wx-config --cxxflags)
linker options: -mwindows;$(shell wx-config --libs)

7. Complie and run


Without step 6 you may see following errors:

No config found to match: /usr/bin/wx-config --cxxflags --unicode=yes --debug=yes in /usr/lib/wx/config

No Target! You should use wx-config program for compilation flags!

It's because there is no debug library exists in /usr/lib/wx/config. By default there is only release+unicode builds.

---

update on 2010/1/9:

It is actually so easy. I didn't do it in a right way. Now I believe the right process should be following the instructions here.

For a simplified guild:

1. sudo apt-get install build-essential
2. sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.8-dev libwxgtk2.8-dbg
3. sudo ln -sv /usr/include/wx-2.8/wx /usr/include/wx
4. Create a wx project in CodeLite, build and run with default settings. It should just works

In several months ago I posted a patch for VC++ 2008 Express to enable its x64 and IA64 targets (by default this free edition of VC++ only supports x86 targets). It used to work with Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 nicely, but now as Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 has been released, it cannot work sometimes, so I decide to update this patch for the new SDK.

I have to mention that Microsoft introduces 2 new bugs in Win7 SDK:

1. If you are running a x86 machine, the x86 version of Win7 SDK will not install x64 and IA64 tools anyway, even if you have selected all checkboxes during the setup.

Workaround: repair the installed Win7 SDK (from control panel), and check all these checkboxes again, then you get all x64 and IA64 tools back. (note: don't try to install x64 SDK to a x86 machine, setup program will fail)

2. After the Win7 SDK (x86/x64/IA64 all versions) is installed, the Windows SDK Configuration Tool will not register the latest v7.0 SDK as system default (instead it still uses v6.0A). As a result VC++ will not be able to locate x64 and IA64 tools (compliers etc).

Workaround: launch the Windows SDK Configuration Tool from start menu, choose the right version (v7.0), and click "Make Current".

Now you can download and install the new patch here. I have tested it on clean x86 and x64 machines.

I removed the two DLLs from x64 package (VCProjectAMD64Platform.dll and VCProjectIA64Platform.dll), because Win7 SDK will copy correct ones (Microsoft has fixed this bug in Win7 SDK).

As a PostgreSQL fans as well as a .NET user, I used PostgreSQL in a couple of .NET projects and it works great. Now LINQ and Entity Framework (EF) become more and more popular so it is natural that I want to adopt these technologies into projects too. At first I tried DB LINQ, but obviously it is not ready to use (descried in my previous post). So I quickly switched to entity framework.

Microsoft designed EF to support not only its SQL Server. It announced a lot of supported (with supported drivers) 3rd party databases listed here. Luckily my favourite PostgreSQL is present (Npgsql).

Microsoft also released a lot of great samples for EF, and I started to learn EF from this one: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/EFQuerySamples (it looks fancy and rich). Then I ported the sample database NorthwindEF to PostgreSQL to test if EF for PostgreSQL really works. The initial test shows it works graet: almost all samples can run with PostgreSQL smoothly.  The translated SQL queries also looks good.

I uploaded the ported EF sample for PostgreSQL here (AFAIK there is no official documents on Internet for EF support of PostgreSQL/Npgsql, so this sample can be a good start).

PostgreSQL和DbLINQ：

• PostgreSQL的名字也可以叫做Postgres，簡寫可以為PG
• PG是一個功能全面的開源數據庫（比那個連ACID都沒有的MySQL強多了），性能也很不錯，我把SQL Server 2008里面的8GB數據導入到PG里面后，發現查詢性能和數據插入性能都差不多，但是SQL Server好像還是要快一點點（非常不嚴謹的測試，我這不超過10%，企業版）
• PG的backup文件真是超級的省空間，SQL Server導出的bak文件有7G多，而PG導出的只有幾百兆（這個數據庫里面重復數據多有關系），PG在備份的時候應該是自動壓縮了
• PG的pgAdminIII雖然界面不是那么好看，但是很好用，能用SQL腳本干的事情它基本上都能干
• PG在Windows上面也支持SSPI集成認證方式，這和SQL Server默認的認證方式是一樣的，可以很大的提升安全性（不用明文密碼了），但是我沒能配成功.. 
• 在PG里面unicode就是utf-8，這樣英文占一個字節，中文占三個字節，不如ucs-2。當然ucs-2只能支持2^16個字符，不是真正的unicode。真正的unicode最好用ucs-4，可是這個字長又太大了。由于PG內部不用ucs-2，所以和windows程序的匹配不是那么理想（NT的unicode就是ucs-2），要么干脆都用DBCS。但是.net里面又只有unicode的string... 所以還是C++好
• DbLINQ雖然已經開發了兩年多了，但現在基本上還是沒法用，簡單的單表查詢還行，query稍微復雜一點點就不行了，group by都時常出問題，完全沒法用在實際的項目中（哪怕是純娛樂的項目）
• DbLINQ現在可下載的是0.18版本（一年前的），從SVN拖下來的是0.19，bug多多，比如PG里面表的主鍵必須命名為xxx_pkey的形式，不然就認不到。外鍵則只支持單列的外鍵，多列的話不能直接生成C#，只能生成一個錯誤的DBML，然后在VS里面修改DBML之后再生成C#，這樣才能用。為這些bug真是浪費了好多時間（重建主鍵就花了幾個小時）
• DbLINQ的很多example里面都是一堆注釋，看也看不懂，基本上沒啥用處

總而言之，我對PostgreSQL這個數據庫印象相當不錯，而對DbLINQ比較失望?？磥硪赑G上面用LINQ，還是直接上ADO.NET Entity Framework比較好。

     摘要: 最近寫個東西要用到正則表達式，于是就想到了Boost庫，由于以前沒有用過這個庫，所以今天為這事兒真是費了一番功夫。

一開始想到的是Boost，但是突然想起VC++ 2008的SP1不是已經帶了tr1的實現嗎，貌似直接用就行了。但是事與愿違，我這里裝的是VC++ 2008 Express，雖然也能#include ，但是寫出來的程序只能編譯不能鏈接。后來一查才知道微軟的tr1實現是不支持Express的（雖然不支持卻又把頭文件放在那里誆人），莫非又要去別個VC完整版那里拷點東西出來不成？這應該是沒必要的，因為從VC++ 2003開始Boost就可以很好的在VC下編譯了，所以干脆不管那個啥tr1了，準備直接從Boost官方網站下載Boost再自己編譯。  閱讀全文

VC++ Express精簡掉了對于ATL和MFC的支持，不過我發現只要從完整安裝版（VSTS等）把C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\atlmfc 這個目錄拷貝過來就直接可以用了，整個文件包是147M，用7z可以壓縮到14M。

復制好這個目錄后，就可以開始配置WTL8.0了：

1、解壓縮WTL8的安裝包
2、復制setup80x.js到setup90x.js
3、用記事本打開setup90x.js，替換所有字符串8.0為9.0并保存文件
4、運行setup90x.js
5、在VC++ Express里面配置WTL的include目錄

visualfc博客里給出的方案是安裝PSDK2003，這個SDK帶的ATL和MFC版本分別是3.0和4.2的，不是最新的版本，不太爽。當然，從完整版的安裝目錄里面拷貝出東西來給Express版本用，這樣做可能還是有點盜版嫌疑。

Visual Studio的Express系列雖然在功能上肯定比不上完整的Team Suite版本，但是它是免費的，而且“該有的都有了”，所以它正在變得越來越流行。對于VC++ Express，它的不方便之處之一是不支持64位編程，而這個限制在安裝Windows SDK后，在默認的設置依然存在。有個叫作Jens的人搜集了各個論壇上程序員們分享的各種方案，現在似乎終于看到了曙光，按照他寫在上面blog里面的方法，可以讓VC++ Express完美的支持64位編程，包括AMD64和IA64。

于是我寫了一些腳本讓這種patch方法能夠自動化的執行。/Files/xcpp/XVCE.zip

這個腳本可以支持32位和64位的Windows。我只在Win6和Win7上面測試過這些腳本，在我用的幾臺電腦上全都完美運行，我以前寫的幾個64位程序項目文件都能順利的打開、編譯和運行。當然IA64的程序雖然能編譯但是我沒地方去運行它們（需要Intel的安騰處理器），所以不完全保證能用，但是應該能用。

下面是readme.txt：

1. Install Visual C++ 2008 Express (to default folder in C drive, or this patch will not work)
2. Install Windows SDK (Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5)
3. Open a command prompt, navigate to the folder contains this file, run setup_x86.bat or setup_x64.bat according to your system architecture
4. If there is no error in the command prompt, launch the Visual C++ 2008 Express IDE and build your X64 or IA64 projects

This work is based on the work by jenshuebel: http://jenshuebel.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/visual-c-2008-express-edition-and-64-bit-targets/

Thanks jenshuebel for the complete and accurate instructions, and thanks Microsoft for the free Visual C++ IDE.