When a VSTA add-in is run or debugged from a stand alone or destructive scenario, the life of the host application is tied to the debugging or running session. In order to start the host application the VSTA add-in must know the location of the exe to run. This information is specified in the project...
Q : I have hit a snag which I can't seem to resolve. This is related to the VSTA project templates generated by ProjGen.exe. One part of the solution generated by the tool is the description of the host item. It is represented by two files - the user portion (e.g. ThisAddin.cs or ThisAddin.vb) and...
Q : A problem I've run into is the IconImageList element of the ProjectProperties tag in the project file (.vbproj or .csproj). If I specify an imagelist bitmap in ProjGen, it includes the full path to the local file and the file itself is not included in the template ZIP package. This obviously...
Q : Are there any issues with native 64-bit host applications as far as VSTA is concerned? Will there be any problems, say, with debugging add-ins when they are loaded by the native x64 app? A : VSTA 2.0 supports 64 bit platforms with no known issues, including debugging. The SDK documentation covers...
On the third screen of ProjectGen there is an item to fill in titled “Host item name”. This item is used in two places in the project descriptor file and three places in projects based off the template: Project template descriptor file: Projects based off the template: Host Item Name Main code file Startup...
I've been working a lot with project templates and ProjectGen lately. Here are some miscellaneous findings based on the VSTA v 2 CTP February 2008 release. ProjectGen does not find hosts registered in the Wow6432Node. This is a known issue with this build and is listed as fixed in the next release. To...
VSTA v 2 host configuration registry entries are similar to VSTA v 1’s- there are a few new entries and a change in how they are organized. Two of the most noticeable differences are the “2.0” subkey and “VSTAVersion” entry. VSTA v 2 entries are stored in the “2.0” subkey, which resides beneath the host...
To remove or "unregister" project templates: The easiest way to remove or "unregister" project templates which are registered with a host is to use the vsta and devenv setup commands. These commands get the VSTA project templates location and the Visual Studio project templates locations specified in...
Overview: During development, changes may need to be made to the proxy. Anytime the proxy is changed its assembly needs to be re-installed in the GAC. Failing to do this will result in the last version installed in the GAC to be used by VSTA and the error "The following module was built either with optimizations...
Overview: Part I described how to automate the DLL organization of a project. This section describes how to modify templates so that all projects based off of them automatically organize their DLL’s. The template may be created with ProjectGen, which is a tool included with Visual Studio 2005 Tools for...
Overview: Finding DLL’s programmatically can be challenging if they are not well organized. For VSTA integration several DLL’s may need to be found including add-in’s to load. In the ShapeApp samples included with the SDK, the add-in samples copy their DLL’s into the folders %MyDocuments%\%HostID%\AppAddins...