June 2009 - VSTA Q & A Blog

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...

Published Mon, Jun 22 2009 1:48 PM by BillL

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...

Published Mon, Jun 22 2009 1:17 PM by BillL

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...

Published Mon, Jun 22 2009 11:05 AM by BillL

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...

Published Fri, Jun 19 2009 4:09 PM by BillL

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...

Published Fri, Jun 19 2009 3:51 PM by BillL

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...

Published Fri, Jun 19 2009 2:33 PM by BillL

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...

Published Fri, Jun 19 2009 2:16 PM by BillL

Filed under: VSTA, Visual Studio 2005, help

"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...

Published Thu, Jun 18 2009 12:09 PM by BillL

Filed under: shapeapp, Proxygen, unrecoverable error

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...

Published Tue, Jun 09 2009 11:55 AM by BillL

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...

Published Tue, Jun 09 2009 10:57 AM by BillL

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...

Published Mon, Jun 08 2009 8:31 AM by BillL

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

Change a proxy to make the methods within the host class accessible

You can change a proxy to make the methods within the hostType class accessible by: 1) Remove the abstract keyword from the type declaration (drawback- add-ins will now be able to write code like “Application app = new Application();” instead...

Published Fri, Jun 05 2009 2:04 PM by BillL

Filed under: add-in, proxy, shapeapp, method, hostType

HostMemberAttributes and meta classes

The HostMemberAttributes are used to reconcile name changes. When there is no name change the attribute is unnecessary. VSTA runtime uses this attribute, if available, to determine which type/method to call in the host. For example, if we change the method...

Published Fri, Jun 05 2009 2:01 PM by BillL

Filed under: proxy, hostmemberattribute, meta

Communication and transfer of the arguments between the host OM and proxy?

Q : What can you tell me about the communication and the transfer of the arguments between the host OM and proxy? A : I believe currently there is no further documentation on this (btw, the on-line documentation is more current than the documentation...

Published Fri, Jun 05 2009 1:56 PM by BillL

Filed under: VSTA, add-in, proxy, VSTA SDK, OM, arguments

Inheritance for COM apps in ProxyGen

There is a known issue with inheritance for COM apps in ProxyGen. The events are not inherited by the interface returned to the add-in and casting won’t fix this. The simple workaround is to add the missing inheritance to the proxy or to the descriptor...

Published Fri, Jun 05 2009 1:38 PM by BillL

Filed under: add-in, com, Proxygen