After hearing on Monday that VS 2008 RTM was available for download for MSDN subscribers I immediately joined the traffic jam to get a copy. Since I never installed a beta version on my primary development machine I was ready for a headache free install. Now I did have an easy install, but getting the Guidance Automation Extensions, Guidance Automation Toolkit and WCSF ported over to VS2008 was not. I spent about two days trying to get everything to work and here are some things I learned.
You must uninstall all pervious versions of software factories, GAT and GAX in that order.
This ended up being more of a pain than I had on my test machines mainly because my primary is Vista and the others were XP Professional SP2. I could not get the GAX to uninstall properly through the Control Panel it would just start and then present a dialog box with just an icon and the OK button. Clicking it just canceled the uninstall with no explanation to why. After some digging I found out that the reason why is because not all of the guidance packages were uninstalled. At least to the satisfaction of the GAX uninstall process. To remedy this you do the following.
- Open Notepad (running as Administrator).
- Open the file:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Recipe Framework\RecipeFramework.xml - Remove all child nodes from the <GuidancePackages> node.
It should look something like this when your done.
1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2: <RecipeFramework SchemaVersion="1.0" TraceLevel="Error" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/pag/gax-manifest">
3: <Hosts>
4: <Host Name="VisualStudio"
InstallerType="Microsoft.Practices.RecipeFramework.VisualStudio.RecipeFrameworkInstaller,
Microsoft.Practices.RecipeFramework.VisualStudio" />
5: </Hosts>
6: <GuidancePackages>
7: </GuidancePackages>
8: </RecipeFramework>
You should be able to uninstall without any trouble. Now in my last post I mention there was tool for cleaning up your GAX/GAT installations. On my Vista machine this did not do the job.
After you have everything uninstall you can follow the steps I mentioned in my last post for installing the WCSF for VS2008. The one thing you may want to change is how you run the installers if you are using Vista. I ran my by opening a command prompt as Administrator, changed my directory to the folder where I stored the installers and used the following command to start the install:
msiexec /i GuidanceAutomationExtensions.msi
Repeat for the toolkit and software factories.
When you are done try this little test.
- Start VS2008
- Try to create a project.
- Check the status bar you may see the message "Project Creation Failed".
This issue is caused by the GAX installer. It adds a redirect because some versions of Orcas Beta 2 contains the assembly TemplateWizardInterface compliled to version 9.0. To fix this follow these steps.
- Close VS2008
- Open Notepad (running as Administrator).
- Open the file:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config
You may want to back this up first.
- Remove the follow nodes. (Should be near the bottom of the file.)
1: <dependentAssembly>
2: <assemblyIdentity name="Microsoft.VisualStudio.TemplateWizardInterface"
publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" culture="neutral" />
3: <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-8.9.9.9" newVersion="9.0.0.0" />
4: </dependentAssembly>
Save and Restart VS 2008. Try to create a project. If the project was created click on the Tools menu. If the GAX installed properly you should see the"Guidance Package Manager" in the menu. If not the primary reason is usually because the original GAX did not uninstall properly.
Now the last thing I will share is the strange problem (I mean really strange problem) I had when I first tried to edit my devenv.exe.config file. I used my favorite text editor Ultra Edit 9.0a (an older version) to make the change I mentioned above. When I restarted VS2008 I still could not create new projects. I double checked my changes and they were correct. I uninstalled and reinstalled GAX several times still no luck. I did repair on VS2008 still not luck. I spent hours searching for other possible causes with no success. So after getting to my wits end I decided to just delete the config file just to see what would happen. VS 2008 started and I was able to create projects again. YEAH! Now I assumed that VS would crash or give my some kind of error if the config was missing, but here comes the strange part. When I opened a backup copy of the file in Ultra Edit I noticed in the dialog box the config was still there. When I looked in Windows Explorer it was not (even when running as Administrator). After double checking from the command line the file was not there. Some how a ghost or shadow copy was still there. When I restored the file through Windows Explorer that file was clearly different if opened in Ultra Edit. So I deleted the copy from Windows Explorer, but since the file was visible in Ultra Edit I deleted that copy from the Open Dialog box. Then when I restored a backup copy from Windows Explorer and used Notepad to edit the necessary change I could finally create projects again. Like I said strange or just my lack of knowledge about how Vista manages files.
There was a lot of pain to get his to work, but I find the WCSF worth it. I am now able to use LINQ, and the cool JavaScript editor for these projects. Life is good.