Win: Add launcher to hide the console window flash

This patch fixes a long-standing complaint from users:
the console window shortly flashing when they start
blender.

This is done by adding a new executable called
blender-launcher.exe which starts blender.exe while
hiding the console.

Any command line parameters given to blender-launcher
will be passed on to blender.exe so it'll be a drop
in replacement.

Starting blender.exe on its own will still function as
a proper console app so no changes required here for
users that use blender for batch processing.

Notable changes:

Registering blender (-R switch) will now register
blender-launcher as the preferred executable.

This patch updates the installer and updates the
shortcuts to start blender-launcher.exe rather
than blender.exe

Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D11094

Reviewed by: brecht, harley

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/source/creator/CMakeLists.txt b/source/creator/CMakeLists.txt
index c2893317924..baea3ad1f9b 100644
--- a/source/creator/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/source/creator/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -285,6 +285,15 @@ if(WITH_PYTHON_MODULE)
 
 else()
   add_executable(blender ${EXETYPE} ${SRC})
+  if(WIN32)
+      add_executable(blender-launcher WIN32
+        blender-launcher.c
+        ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/release/windows/icons/winblender.rc
+        ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/blender.exe.manifest
+      )
+      target_compile_definitions (blender-launcher PRIVATE -D_UNICODE -DUNICODE)
+      target_link_libraries(blender-launcher Pathcch.lib)
+  endif()
 endif()
 
 if(WITH_BUILDINFO)
@@ -1212,7 +1221,7 @@ endif()
 
 if(WIN32 AND NOT WITH_PYTHON_MODULE)
   install(
-    TARGETS blender
+    TARGETS blender blender-launcher
     COMPONENT Blender
     DESTINATION "."
   )