Windows Shell Extensions - Out of Proc

[Thomas Heller]

Ralf schrieb:
> I'm trying to develop Windows Shell Extensions with the Python Win32
> Extensions. Most of the samples are working. However, I have a
> slightly different need: I want the Python COM server to run as a
> separate process ("LocalServer" or "OutOfProc").
> 
> As I understand, both the InProc and LocalServer versions are created
> automatically. So to disable the InProc version, I removed the
> InProc32 key from the registry, for the context menu example
> distributed with the Python Win32 Extensions. However, this removes
> the context menu from Explorer, even though the LocalServer32 key
> remains. I could access the COM objects in the example with a Python
> client, so I have no idea why Explorer can't use the LocalServer
> version.
> 
> Can anyone help with this? I've Google'd for hours, without much
> success. I couldn't even find a good example for any other language,
> only references saying it's possible for C#.

I think that for whatever reasons, explorer always tries to create
shell extensions as InProc.  CoCreateInstance, which is the usual
API to create COM instances, allows to specify which one you want.

Thomas