Gary Depue's VSTA Blog

.NET 4 and VSTA redistribution

With the advent of .NET 4 and related questions about VSTA's compatibility, we tested to confirm the following: Redistribution of VSTA 2.0 (with your application) requires .Net 3.5 SP1 to be installed on the target machine. Starting with a clean Windows...

Published Fri, Oct 22 2010 2:19 PM by Gary

Filed under: .NET 4.0, redistribution, deployment

Is VSTA 2.0 supported under Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010?

I’ll preface my answers about support for VSTA in Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010 with a quick synopsis of VSTA 2.0 platform-related elements. VSTA 2.0 is based on VS2008 and .NET 3.5 SP1. It supports 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. · The VSTA...

Published Thu, Oct 07 2010 1:01 PM by Gary

Filed under: VS2010, Windows 7, .NET 4.0

64-bit setup script for ShapeAppMacroRecordingCSHarp sample

With 64-bit Windows, vsta registry entries must be changed from 32-bit registry: HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\ TO 64-bit registry: HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\ I've attached SetupShapeAppMacroRecordingCSharp64.js to demonstrate these changes. Since setup scripts...

Published Wed, Jan 06 2010 10:10 AM by Gary

How to add a global variable to your AddIn project (VB)

It's simple for your Visual Basic add-in projects/project template to provide a global variable, like 'ThisApplication'. This kind of variable gives the end user convenient, VBA-like access to your host application's object model. To define...

Published Fri, Apr 24 2009 3:06 PM by Gary

Filed under: Friend, global variable, Object Model, hidden file

Improvements to IPHTerminateOrphanedVSTA sample

Below are significant improvements to the IPH sample posted here through the use of global mutexes for cross-process synchronization. Question: What does the IPHTerminateOrphanedVSTA sample do? Answer: You may have noticed that the IDE process (vsta.exe...

Published Fri, Apr 10 2009 4:57 PM by Gary

Filed under: VSTA 2.0, global mutex, In-process host, mutex

Plain speak on VSTA add-in versioning and compatibility

Recent discussions have helped me clarify this confusing topic of versioning and compatibility. Maybe this will help you too. VSTA add-ins assemblies are created by building a VSTA add-in project. Add-in assemblies and add-in projects are seperate, but...

Published Fri, Mar 20 2009 11:47 AM by Gary

Filed under: versioning, compatibility

Nullable<T> types: Reflection doesn't determine a Nullable type, overloadng is cool solution, but using inferred types is better!

To get the type of a variable, we can usually use instance.GetType(); But for Nullable<T> types, GetType reflection returns the returns the underlying type . That is: int i = 0; isInteger = i.GetType().Equals( typeof ( int )); //isInteger == true...

Published Thu, Mar 05 2009 11:45 AM by Gary

Preserving 'hidden' elements in a COM interop assembly

If you are shipping interop assemblies or PIAs of COM type libraries, you may have some elements in your type library marked as hidden. But, C# and VB Intellisense show these hidden elements anyway. This problem can be fixed with some low level work....

Published Fri, Feb 06 2009 3:42 PM by Gary

Filed under: COM Interop, EditorBrowsableAttribute, Tlbimp.exe, hidden, Object Browser, PIA, VB, Intellisense, FUNCFLAG_FHIDDEN, C#

Using custom adapters with VSTA 2.0 pipeline - Part 3, the ShapeAppBasicCSharpGenericCollectionIndexAdapter sample

ShapeAppBasicCSharpGenericCollectionIndexAdapter sample We’ll assume that you’ve looked over the previous sample from part 2 This sample will demonstrate how to pass a System.Collections.Generic.IList<ShapeAppCSharp. Document > instance...

Published Mon, Jan 26 2009 4:16 PM by Gary

Filed under: Addin.Contract, Contract, Adapter, VSTA 2.0, ProxyResolve, AdapterResolve, System.AddIn, pipeline, System.AddIn.Pipeline.CollectionAdapters, ByRef, converters, RemoteObjectAdapters

Sequential Description of Host Automation via System.AddIn

Add-in activation Host app calls System.AddIn.Hosting.AddInToken.Activate. System.AddIn Activate, loads the Add-in.dll creating addin instance that implements the Add-In (entrypoint) interface. Next, System.AddIn loads AddInSideAdapter.dll creating Add...

Published Mon, Jan 19 2009 9:54 PM by Gary

Filed under: Addin.Contract, Contract, Adapter, System.AddIn, pipeline

Using custom adapters with VSTA 2.0 pipeline - Part 2, the ShapeAppBasicCSharpGenericCollectionAdapter sample

ShapeAppBasicCSharpGenericCollectionAdapter sample This sample shows how to pass a System.Collections.Generic. IList <ShapeAppCSharp. Document > instance from the ShapeAppBasicCSharp host application to its add-in by extending the VSTA pipeline...

Published Mon, Jan 19 2009 2:44 PM by Gary

Filed under: Addin.Contract, Contract, Adapter, VSTA 2.0, ProxyResolve, AdapterResolve, System.AddIn, pipeline

Using custom adapters with VSTA 2.0 pipeline - Part 1

The VSTA team provides an overview on how to hook custom adapters with VSTA pipeline here

Published Mon, Jan 19 2009 2:39 PM by Gary

Filed under: Adapter, VSTA 2.0, ProxyResolve, AdapterResolve, System.AddIn, pipeline

After ~5 minutes of idle time debugging macro projects fails with an IPC Port error.

After ~5 minutes of idle time, VSTA macro projects are unable to debug and VSTA IDE displays a “Failed to write to an IPC Port: The pipe is being closed” or similar. Second attempt produces this error message “Requested Service not found”...

Published Wed, Oct 22 2008 4:00 PM by Gary

Filed under: IPC Port, Debugger, InitializeLifetimeService

Sample: Watchdog to terminate orphaned VSTA process

This is an IPH sample , IPHTerminateOrphanedVSTA. It uses a global mutext to start one, and only one, simple observer thread. The observer thread continues to execute while the vsta process is alive, whether or not a project is open.. The observer thread...

Published Fri, Sep 26 2008 2:43 PM by Gary

Add your proxy assemblies to .NET Add Reference tab in Visual Studio/VSTA IDE

Your VSTA Project template includes a reference to your proxy assembly. If the end user manually deletes the proxy assembly reference, they will not find the proxy assembly listed under the .NET tab. To add your own assemblies to the .NET tab Create a...

Published Fri, Apr 04 2008 9:49 AM by Gary

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