I have several projects that I’ve built in Sencha Architect 2, but I try to make all my new projects in Sencha Architect 3. For various reasons I choose not to upgrade some projects for the time being.

However I ran into an issue where when I double click the .xds project file – it is opening Sencha Architect 2 instead of 3. Windows 7 is actually worse about file associations than Windows XP so I had to use a registry patch to correct this issue.

There are 2 entries of concern for file associations. First there is an entry in the “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT” (HKCR) with the file extension. Here is a registry export:

-----------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xds]
@="SenchaArchitect.Editor.1"
"Content Type"="sencha/sencha-architect"
-----------------------

You can see that this further ties to a further HKCR entry called “SenchaArchitect.Editor.1″ which looks like this:
-----------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SenchaArchitect.Editor.1\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\SenchaArchitect2\\Sencha Architect\" \"%1\""
-----------------------

Here’s the culprit! I created a registry patch to point to the correct sencha architect 3 locations. This won’t take effect immediately unless you kill the explorer process and re-launch it. Open the task manager with Ctrl+Shit+Esc, in the processes tab select explorer.exe and click “End Process”, in the File menu select “New Task”, type explorer and click OK. Now you can double click the .xds files again and it will open sencha architect 3!

Here is the registry patch:
-----------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SenchaArchitect.Editor.1\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\SenchaArchitect3\\Sencha Architect\" \"%1\""
-----------------------