Ezequiel Jadib’s Blog

Last week I’ve installed Microsoft Silverlight Tools 2 Beta 2 on my laptop to start developing applications for Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

Once the installation finish, I created a Silverlight Application just to see if everything works as expected. The application was successfully created but when I tried to build and run the solution, I faced with the following error:

After spend some time searching for some clues, I found the following solution:

1. Open the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt.
2. Execute devenv /ResetSkipPkgs in the command prompt.
   This switch clears all options to skip loading added to VSPackages by users wishing to avoid loading problem VSPackages. This switch also starts Visual Studio.
3. Close Visual Studio and then execute devenv /Setup in the command prompt.
   This switch forces Visual Studio to merge the resource metadata that describes menus, toolbars, and command groups from all VSPackages available
4. Open Visual Studio and have fun.

For more information about the Devenv Command Line Switches, see Devenv Command Line Switches on MSDN.

Hope this helps.

As you may know, in the June 2008 release of the Composite Application Guidance for WPF we are not shipping a guidance package. So, I created two Visual Studio Templates to help you to start with the creation of a solution using the Composite Application Guidance for WPF.

You will get two kind of solution/project templates

After creating a solution using the templates, you must create in the folder where solution its located a folder named Library and copy to it the following assemblies (otherwise the solution created is not going to compile):

• Microsoft.Practices.Composite.dll
• Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Wpf.dll
• Microsoft.Practices.Composite.UnityExtensions.dll
• Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll
• Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2.dll

Download the Composite Application Guidance for WPF templates (zip file with a VSI inside)

Any feedback is welcome. Enjoy!

After publishing an alpha version, a beta version and a RC 1 version I’m glad to announce that the final version of Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008 has been published on MSDN.

What is new in this release?

• The April 2008 release of Smart Client Software Factory includes support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. This release does not support Visual Studio 2005.
• April 2008 Guidance Package can run side-by-side with May 2007 Guidance Package.
• The April 2008 release requires Guidance Automation Extensions 1.4.
• Support for Enterprise Library 3.1.
• We fixed a few bugs that were identified by the community. These are some of the bugs fixed:
  • WPF C# View is not being disposed correctly
  • View does not properly dispose
  • Install fails when VB is not installed
  • ShowViewInWorkspace Id
  • Error with WPF SmartParts and ISmartPartInfoProvider Title is required
  • Visual Basic Version of the SCSF has a missing code in the view’s dispose method
  • App.config is not using the signed assemblies (PublicKeyToken is null)

How to enable a May 2007 solution

If you have a May 2007 solution and you want to enable it to use this new guidance please read this page.

Known Issues

In this page you will find the list of known issues that exists in Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008.

Downloads

Smart Client Software Factory - April 2008

Smart Client Software Factory Source Code - April 2008

Smart Client Software Factory Documentation - April 2008 (CHM format)

Documentation

Documentation on MSDN (HTML format)

Feedback

Feel free to give us your feedback on the discussion board. If you see issues, please post them to the Issue Tracker.

More Information of this release

For more information about this new release please read Blaine’s post and Michael’s post.

Enjoy this new guidance.

If you downloaded our fourth drop probably you may have noticed that we have removed the IMetadataInfo and IMetadataInfoProvider classes. (See Julian's post for more info about this change).

In the Prism Forum some people are asking how to provide metadata to the view now that the IMetadataInfo class has been removed, so in this post I will explain how to do it.

Imagine that you have a TabRegion named MainRegion in your Shell and you want to add a view to it.

 <TabControl Name=”Tab” Prism:RegionManager.Region=”MainRegion”>

After you do this

regionManagerService.GetRegion(“MainRegion“).Add(new View())

you will see something like the following picture

Looks good, but… we don't have a header, so let's see how to do it

• Create a HeaderModel class

  namespace PrismTabHeader
  {
      using System.Windows;
  
      public class HeaderModel : DependencyObject
      {
          public static readonly DependencyProperty HeaderInfoProperty =
              DependencyProperty.Register(“HeaderInfo“, typeof(string), typeof(HeaderModel));
  
          public string HeaderInfo
          {
              get { return (string)GetValue(HeaderInfoProperty); }
              set { SetValue(HeaderInfoProperty, value); }
          }
      }
  }
  

  This class contains a HeaderInfo dependency property.

• Update the view by adding the Model property.

  public HeaderModel Model
  {
      get { return DataContext as HeaderModel; }
      set { DataContext = value; }
  }
  

• Create a new style named HeaderStyle in the Shell.

 

<Window.Resources>
  <Style TargetType=”{x:Type TabItem}“ x:Key=”HeaderStyle”>
     <Setter Property=”Header” Value=”{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}, Path=Content.DataContext.HeaderInfo}“ />
  </Style>
</Window.Resources>

This style is going to be applied to TabItem elements and is saying that the value of the property Header is going to binded to Content.DataContext.HeaderInfo where Content is the view.

Note: You can also expose a HeaderInfo property in the view and change the binding path to Content.HeaderInfo.

• Replace the TabControl definition of your Shell with the following code

 

 

<TabControl Name=”Tab” Prism:RegionManager.Region=”MainRegion” ItemContainerStyle=”{StaticResource HeaderStyle}“ />

As you may see we are setting the ItemContainerStyle dependency property to affect the appearance of the elements that contain the data items. In this case, the style is going to be applied to all TabItem elements within the scope the style is defined in.

 

• Set the Model to the view before adding it to the region

  View view = new View();
  
  view.Model = new HeaderModel() { HeaderInfo = “My Header“ };
  
  region.Add(view);
  

If you run the application now you will see the header.

Hope this helps.

Some time ago, I wrote a post about How to update the installer to run Smart Client Software Factory in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

Now I’m proud to announce that we shipped an Alpha version of Smart Client Software Factory for Visual Studio 2008. As Blaine announced before, in order to run this new release you will require an upgrade of GAX/GAT to the February 2008 release.

For more information about this new release you can read the following posts:

• SCSF April 2008 Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 Published to CodePlex by Blaine
• Smart Client Software Factory April 2008 Alpha Available by Michael
• Alpha version of SCSF April 2008 that supports Visual Studio 2008 is now available by Sebastian
• Versión Alpha de SCSF April 2008 con soporte para Visual Studio 2008 ya está disponible by Mariano (in Spanish)

Note: This is not the final release and still has known bugs. Use at your own risk

Download SCSF April 2008 Alpha Release and give us your feedback on the discussion board.

A few days ago we have published the first drop of our Reference Implementation on Codeplex.

For more details on this release, please check Glenn’s post.

OK, we have installed Smart Client Software Factory in Orcas Beta 2, but.. how about Web Client Software Factory?

In this post, I will detail the steps you have to follow in order to use WCSF June 2007 with Orcas Beta 2.

1. Install Guidance Automation Extensions Technology Preview (July 2007 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Beta 2).
2. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.
   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk).
3. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open….Select the WCSF MSI file (Web Client Software Factory - June 2007.msi).
     
4. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
    
5. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • FindVSInstallDir
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
   • VistualStudioHelpRegistrySearch

   This is how it should look after replacing these values
   

6. Save the changes.
7. Install Web Client Software Factory June 2007.
   

Known Issues

WAP and Non-WAP Issues

• Runtime exception when the project is executed
   

  This is an old issue which was discussed in this thread. In order to fix this you have to modify the line 107 of the WebClientApplication.cs file (under CompositeWebApplicationBlock\CompositeWeb) to:

  if (HttpRequestHelper.IsHandledByPageHandlerFactory(context.Request.Url.ToString()) && context.Handler != null) 
  

• Build fails after adding a Foundational or Business module with Test project

  In order to fix this you have to modify the following files inside WebClientSoftwareFactoryPackage inside Templates folder:

  • \Module.Tests.VB\*.vbproj
  • \Module.Tests.C#\*.csproj

Change:

<Reference Include=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL”>
</Reference>

For:

<Reference Include=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL” /> 

Non-WAP specific issues

• A dialog box is shown after the creation of the solution
   

  If you click Yes, you can go on without problem, but if you want to avoid this dialog box everytime you create a Web Client solution you will have to add the missing tags in the Web.config template.

• Website is not being recognized as a WebProject

  This cause the following issues:

  • An exception occurs after Adding a Business Module
    

  • In the Add Foundation Module window the website dropdown is empty so the Finish button is disabled. No Foundational Module can be added to the web client solution.
    

  • The Add View (with Presenter) menu option is not visible.
     

In order to fix these you have two options:

• Closing and reopening the solution (it's just a workaround :))
• Update the CreateWebClientSoftwareSolutionCommon.xml recipe by adding the following in the Actions section:

  <Action Name=”SetIsWebProject” Type=”AddProjectGlobalsEntryAction” PropertyName=”IsWebProject” PropertyValue=”True”>
        <Input Name=”Project” RecipeArgument=”WebUIProject” />
  </Action>
  
  

  You should also modify the vwd.webinfo file by removing the IsWebProject=”true” property:

  <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
  <!– Visual Studio global web project settings.–>
  <VisualWebDeveloper>
  <Globals>
      <UserProperties />
  </Globals>
  </VisualWebDeveloper>
  
  

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Attached you fill find a zip file that contains the files modified. Just unzip this on %program files%\Microsoft Web Client Factory\WCSF Guidance Package. Click Yes to All to replace the existing files.
Note: The zip does not includes the modified Composite Web Application Block.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind.

Attachment: WCSFOrcas.zip

Now that we have Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 (SCSF) installed on a box with only Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2, we may want to install the SCSF source code, and why not, customize the guidance package.

To do this, we first have to modify the source code installer as we do with the factory installer (with some slightly different steps).

1. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.

   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk) .

2. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open…. Browse to %programfiles%\Microsoft Smart Client Factory\Source Code Installer and select the SmartClientFactorySourceInstall.msi file.
     
   Figure 1. The Orca MSI editor with the Smart Client Software Factory Source Code msi opened.

3. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
     
   Figure 2. The RegLocator table of the SCSF Source Code msi.

4. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • VisualStudioProjectRegistry
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
     

   This is how it should look after replacing these values 
   
   Figure 3. The RegLocator table values modified.

5. Save the changes. 
6. Install Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 source code.
    
   Figure 4. The SCSF Source Code is properly installed. 

Now that the source code is installed, we need to open the guidance package to see if we are able to customize it or if we have to do something else before.

1. Browse to %sourcecodedir% and open GuidancePackage.sln.
2. Because the Guidance Package was created with a previous version of Visual Studio you must convert the solution. The Conversion Wizard will guide you through the process. Click Next to proceed.
   
   Figure 5. The Visual Studio Conversion Wizard.
3. Click Finish to start the conversion.
4. Click Close.
5. If you try to build de solution you will encounter compilation errors.
   
   Figure 6. Compilation errors after building the guidance package.
   
   This happens because the package and the installer references to GAX 1.2 assemblies instead of GAX 1.3
   
   Figure 7. Missing references in the guidance package and in the installer.
6. Remove the references and add them again. You will find the assemblies in the .NET Tab of the Add Reference dialog or in %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies.

   Note: The assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Design is included in the Visual Studio 2008 SDK. You have to install the SDK in order to add this reference (Download SDK). After installing it the assembly will appear in the .NET Tab.

7. Customize your package. Build, register and enjoy!. 

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.

NOTE: A new version of Smart Client Software Factory was published. This new version is for Visual Studio 2008. Please check this post for more information.

One of the prerequisites to install SCSF is having Visual Studio 2005. This prerequisite doesn’t allow us to install SCSF in a box with only Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2 installed.

Figure 1. The error raised by the SCSF installer if you don’t have Visual Studio 2005 installed.

In this post, I will detail the steps you have to follow in order to use SCSF with Orcas Beta 2.

1. Install Guidance Automation Extensions Technology Preview (July 2007 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Beta 2).
2. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.

   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk) .

3. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open…. Select the SCSF MSI file (Smart Client Software Factory – May 2007.msi).
   
   Figure 2. The Orca MSI editor with the Smart Client Software Factory msi opened.

4. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
   
   Figure 3. The RegLocator table of the SCSF msi.
5. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • FindVSInstallDir
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
   • VistualStudioHelpRegistrySearch

   This is how it should look after replacing these values
   
   Figure 4. The RegLocator table values modified.

6. Save the changes.
   
   Figure 5. The Orca MSI Editor save dialog.
7. Install Smart Client Software Factory May 2007.

  
Figure 6. The SCSF is properly installed.

Figure 7. The SCSF solution created with Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2.

Figure 8. The SCSF solution created with Visual Studio Orcas Beta 2 running.

Known Issues

Note: Sebastian Iacomuzzi wrote about the possible workarounds you can apply to fix this known issues. Check out the following posts:

• Smart Client Software Factory & Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Workarounds for C# Known Issues
• Smart Client Software Factory & Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 - Workarounds for Visual Basic Known Issues

In C#:

• Compiling errors after run the Add WPF-View (with presenter) recipe (missing references).
  • Change the project’s target framework to 3.0 to compile successfully.

In VB:

• Compile errors after run the Create Solution recipe (Form1 is not a member of "Shell").
  • Change Form1 to ShellForm to compile successfully.
• Application crashes after run the Add WPF-View (with presenter) recipe. 
  • Still researching on this.

We are working on this issues in order to provide the steps to fix them. I will post about it so stay tuned.

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.