How do I launch a new instance of RAD Studio from Explorer

1
votes

I have the habit of opening my Delphi projects from File Explorer by double-clicking on the .dpr or .dproj file.

Normally, this will launch Embarcadero RAD Studio XE7 in my case and open the project for me.

I'd like to compare how something is done in a separate project (different directory, etc.). If I double-click on a second .dpr/.dproj file, the default action seems to be to add that to the Project Group of the instance of RAD Studio that I already have open.

Is there a way I can set up RAD Studio to open a second instance for me so that I can see things side by side?

Currently I manually open up a new instance and then find the project file through File->Open, but that is painful.

1
delphidelphi-xe
Opening a new instance is easy. Hard to see past that. – David Heffernan
Drag the dpr to the IDE. – Sertac Akyuz
@SertacAkyuz: Drag the dpr to the new instance of the IDE. Just be aware that dragging a dpr onto the IDE will still add the dpr to the current project group if there is one, so you have to make sure there is no project being auto-loaded in the new IDE instance (auto-saved workspace, etc) before dragging. – Remy Lebeau
You can try using the Delphi Dev. Shell Tools . – RRUZ

1 Answers

3
votes

In the Registry, the .dpr and .dproj file extensions are registered to invoke bdslauncher.exe if the IDE is not already running, and to invoke DDE to pass the dragged filename to an existing IDE if it is running. So, the only way to make a double-click open a new instance of the IDE would be to change the Registry settings to bypass bdslauncher.exe and DDE and just invoke bds.exe directly with the filename as a command-line parameter.

Otherwise, the other alternatives are to:

  1. drag&drop a .dpr/.droj file directly onto the bds.exe file, which will run a new copy of bds.exe that will open the dragged file.

drag and drop

  1. right-click on a .dpr/.dproj file, choose "Open With", and select bds.exe (you can optionally set it as the default app or not). On subsequent right-clicks, the "Open With" menu will now have a submenu (if it did not already) that includes "Embarcadero RAD Studio" as an option.

open with