Blogs

Chapter Two: Loading Add-ins

Here is the second chapter in my integration journey. If you have not looked at the first blog post , it would be a good idea to look there first, because that post will explain the application I am working with and my idea behind it. First, let’s...

Posted to VSTA Integration Newbie by BillL on 06-29-2009

Filed under: add-in, integration, VSTA

Hang-ups during in-process debugging.

Here is Microsoft’s workaround for the problem hang-ups during in-process debugging: “The idea is that we want to wait for the type –registering threads to finish before we call addin.FinishInitialization. What I did is to record the...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-22-2009

Filed under: VSTA, in-process debugging, AddIn

Building and deploying a product that uses PIAs.

Q : My program uses about a dozen PIAs with built with tlbimp and needs about half of them installed with gacutil. Is the following usage scenario correct? 1. My colleagues who build my product would only need to do the tlbimp steps in order to generate...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-22-2009

Filed under: GacUtil, PIA, tlbimp

ProxyGen has an inheritance issue with COM hosts.

Q : When working with a COM host, such as the ShapeAppMFC sample included in the SDK, ProxyGen creates descriptor and proxy files which do not expose events due to the inheritance structure. Three types are generated for a class: the classType, IClassType...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-22-2009

Filed under: VSTA, com, Proxygen, ShapeAppMFC, autoproxygen

Custom Editors in VSTA

Q : Would it be possible for me to create a Custom Editor using VSPackage and then use it with VSTA? A : >> Would it be possible for me to create a Custom Editor using VSPackage Yes. >>and then use it with VSTA? No. However, you should be...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-19-2009

Filed under: VSTA, Custom editor, VSPackage

Language changes are not applied to the first run of VSTA

Q : After I installed VSTA and some language packs I changed the language by modifying “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VSTAHost\<hostid>\8.0\General\UILanguage.” However, when I ran VSTA and it configured the environment for first...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-19-2009

Filed under: VSTA, language

Read-Only IDE Window

Q : Is it possible to show users a VSTA IDE window but prevent them from editing the code? A : It may be possible to do this by calling IVsTextBuffer.SetStateFlags() with BUFFERSTATEFLAGS.BSF_USER_READONLY. If that doesn’t work, you could try creating...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-19-2009

Filed under: VSTA, DTE, readonly

Integrating custom help into VSTA

Q : I was wondering how to integrate custom help files into VSTA. So far, pressing F1 shows some general help about VSTA, but nothing that will help my customers to write macros. A : VSTA and Visual Studio use Microsoft Help 2. HelpStudio Lite is the...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-19-2009

Filed under: VSTA, Visual Studio 2005, help

How to: Prompt the User to Save Unsaved Files

A useful function the DTE has a built in is to prompt the user to save any unsaved files. It is a good idea to make this call in when shutting down the DTE, for example in the disconnect method of the VstaDesignTimeIntegration class. EnvDTE. vsPromptResult...

Posted to Melody's VSTA Blog by Melody on 06-19-2009

Filed under: vsta, Save

Chapter One: A Sample Program and Inversion of Control

My name is Bill, and I am an integration newbie. The purpose of my blog is to chronicle my experiences as I work to integrate Visual Studio Tools for Applications into my own program. Hopefully, this will help other programmers get started with VSTA integration...

Posted to VSTA Integration Newbie by BillL on 06-18-2009

Filed under: sample, Inversion of Control

"Unrecoverable Error" in ProxyGen

Q : When I try to use ProxyGen to generate a descriptor file for ShapeAppCSharp.exe, it reports an unrecoverable error. No error code is given, but it reports that the exception has been thrown by a target of an invocation. I get the same error when I...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-18-2009

Filed under: shapeapp, Proxygen, unrecoverable error

Frequent Events and Garbage Collection

When an event will be fired many times it is a good practice to do periodic garbage collection. When a VSTA add-in hooks into an event which is fired many times this becomes even more important because the memory usage for the host process will grow very...

Posted to Melody's VSTA Blog by Melody on 06-17-2009

Filed under: vsta, Event, Memory Usage

The assembly will not install to the Global Assembly Cache.

Here's how to troubleshoot when an assembly will not install to the GAC: Q111094: INFO: Troubleshooting .NET Assembly Installation Issues Problem: The assembly will not install to the Global Assembly Cache A. Verify the following information for the...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-09-2009

Filed under: assembly, GAC, troubleshoot, .Net

Proxygen won't run with a C++/CLI program.

Q : I can't use proxygen with a very simple C++/CLI program. After execute proxygen I always get the error: ProxyGen.exe Error: 10030 : The following file is not a valid managed assembly: (path to the executable) What is the problem? A : Prox ygen...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-09-2009

Filed under: CLR, c++, Proxygen, 10030, CLI, error

Multiple thread problem in VSTA

Q : Here is a question about VSTA multi threads. I have a function to create a new project file. It works fine when I just run the line of code in VSTA. But it failed when debugging. I looked into it and found no difference except for the executing thread...

Posted to VSTA Q & A Blog by BillL on 06-08-2009

Filed under: VSTA, add-in, macro, thread

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