I want to show the Windows Explorer context menu.
I don't want to add my application to it, I just want to display it.
A good example of the implementation that I need is Total Commander.
If you press and hold right mouse button, TC will show the context menu, which is exactly the same as in Windows explorer.
I'm using C++/Qt, but language is not important here.
You have two options:
1) Implement each functionality on your own, creating the corresponing actions on a custom context menu, or
2) Access the Windows API... and this is just what Qt is not intended to considering that Qt is cross-platform.
I found several samples that may help you. You're not likely to be able to do this with Qt alone, since the shell context menu is highly OS-specific; probably some Win32 calls will be needed also.
A Raymond Chen blog series "How to host an IContextMenu"
And some non-C++ samples also:
And related SO questions:
http://www.ffuts.org/blog/right-click-context-menus-with-qt/
If, on the other hand, you're looking for something like "Windows explorer integration" or "Windows Shell integration", here's a good (albeit non-QT specific) example:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/15171/Simple-shell-context-menu
The key is implementing these two Windows shell interfaces:
IContextMenu
IShellExtInt
Here's how I do it: