Build and run ganache-ui on a new Windows 11 workstation in a corporate environment

Took me about a day to build ganache-ui so I decided to put it here in writing. Hopefully it will save time to somebody
So, let's start. I had a brand-new Windows 11 workstation and Chrome installed

Install Git

Install node.js

Update your npm to the latest version

Update your npm-gyp to the latest version with "npm install -g node-gyp@latest"

Install windows-build-tools. Although the page says that it's no longer needed - you will need python2 from this package. May be you can install just python 2 and then proceed to the following item

Make sure that your python2 path is in your PATH

Now go the ganache-ui git and download it with git clone.
Their git readme page contains pretty good explanations on how to build the ganache-ui project.

Open your node command prompt

If you are behind a corporate transparent proxy you will need to do the following in the command window:

set NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0

npm config set strict-ssl false

build ganache-ui

How to prevent messy desktop when the monitor switches off

A problem that bothered me for a couple of days when I moved on to another worsktation with Windows 10: when you leave your desktop unattended for the power saving to kick in and turn off your monitor - the desktop would go crazy : all windows will be moved and resize as if to fit into a very small desktop size.
After some googling it turned out that Windows would "lose" the identification of the connected monitor and would switch to another "default" monitor. And will change the layout of the desktop to the size of this "default" monitor. Which turns out to be 1024x768.

In order to change that the following steps need to be taken:

Open RegEdit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\Configuration

Find the "default" device.

This part is a bit tricky. I first deleted all the keys that were there besides something that looked to me like my SAMSUNG monitor description.

Then when my monitor went to sleep again Windows added another key to the registery with the name of NOEDID_8086_9BC5_00000000_00020000_31063...

This is the key under which some settings need to be changed:

et voila

A tiny and very handy CachedValue class

In server-side programming it happens very often that getting a value takes a lot of time, but the result can be stored for some time. A classical answer to this is of course caching. The class below allows to wrap this in a very simple model.

using System;

namespace IBSoft.Helpers
{
    public class CachedValue<T>
    {
        private T        value;
        private double   ttlInSeconds;
        private Func<T>  getValue;
        private DateTime expireAt = DateTime.MinValue;

        public CachedValue(int ttlInSeconds, Func<T> getValue)
        {
            this.ttlInSeconds = ttlInSeconds;
            this.getValue = getValue;
        }

        public T Value
        {
            get
            {
                if (DateTime.UtcNow > this.expireAt)
                {
                    T oldValue = this.value;

                    this.value = getValue();

                    var now = DateTime.UtcNow;
                    this.expireAt = now.AddSeconds(ttlInSeconds);

                    if (!this.value.Equals(oldValue))
                        this.LastValueUpdate = now;
                }

                return this.value;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// set when the value changes
        /// </summary>
        public DateTime LastValueUpdate { get; private set; }

        /// <summary>
        /// invalidates the value and causes reload on the next call
        /// </summary>
        public void Invalidate()
        {
            this.expireAt = DateTime.MinValue;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// add implicit type conversion to T so that it's possible to use CacheValue<T> without the need to do cv.Value
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="cv"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static implicit operator T(CachedValue<T> cv)
        {
            return cv.Value;
        }
    }
}