April 2008 - Posts

• ActiveX Controls in .NET and the Enabled bug

  We found and interesting bug during a migration. The issue was that when there was an iteration through the controls in the forms, and you set the Enabled property, the property didn't get set. After some research my friend Olman found this workaroung   foreach(Control c in Controls) {    ctrl.Enabled = true;   if (ctrl is AxHost) ((AxHost)ctrl).Enabled = true; } Posted Apr 18 2008, 12:04 PM by Mrojas with no comments Filed under: VIsual Basic .NET, .NET General Tip, VB6 Migration, C#, Software Development

• Install Assembly in GAC with C#

  Do you want to create a program to install your assembly in the GAC using C#. Well if you had that requirement or you are just curious, here is how. I read these three articles: Demystifying the .NET Global Assembly Cache GAC API Interface  Undocumented Fusion What I wanted just a straight answer of how to do it. Well here is how:   using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.GAC; //// Artinsoft //// Author: Mauricio Rojas orellabac@gmail.com mrojas@artinsoft.com //// This program uses the undocumented GAC API to perform a simple install of an assembly in the GAC namespace AddAssemblyToGAC { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { // Create an FUSION_INSTALL_REFERENCE struct and fill it with data FUSION_INSTALL_REFERENCE[] installReference = new FUSION_INSTALL_REFERENCE[1]; installReference[0].dwFlags = 0; // Using opaque scheme here installReference[0].guidScheme = System.GAC.AssemblyCache.FUSION_REFCOUNT_OPAQUE_STRING_GUID; installReference[0].szIdentifier = "My Pretty Aplication Identifier"; installReference[0].szNonCannonicalData= "My other info";   // Get an IAssemblyCache interface   IAssemblyCache pCache = AssemblyCache.CreateAssemblyCache(); String AssemblyFilePath = args[0];   if (!System.IO.File.Exists(AssemblyFilePath)) { Console.WriteLine("Hey! Please use a valid path to an assembly, assembly was not found!"); } int result = pCache.InstallAssembly(0, AssemblyFilePath,installReference);   Console.WriteLine("Process returned " + result); Console.WriteLine("Done!");   }   } } And here's the complete source code for this application: DOWNLOAD SOURCE CODE AND BINARIES Posted Apr 09 2008, 10:42 AM by Mrojas with no comments Filed under: VIsual Basic .NET, .NET General Tip, VB6 Migration, C#, Software Development

• Useful MSBuild Custom Tasks

  I present here the implementation of some useful tasks In Artinsoft we perform massive migrations of VB6 code to VB.Net and C#. And sometimes after migration there are customizations to be performed on the code, to add new functionality or to set certain new properties.  The idea was to provide a couple of very simple and puntual MSBuildTask  to illustrate how easy it is to create custom tasks and to provide a starting  point to create new one.  You can freely use this code, just keep this comments and remember this is just  a sample code. There are not warranties. ;) And i made it a rush I know it could have  been written better  Artinsoft  mrojas@artinsoft.com   The implemented tasks are: RemoveCOMReference  Removes COMReferences from your project. COM references are for when you are using things thru Interop FixOutputPath  Resets the output paths to bin\Release and bin\Debug AddProjectReference Add a reference to another project. A nice feature is that it generates RelativePaths the way Visual Studio does AddSimpleReference Add a reference to a very simple references like the ones you add when you click Add Reference and add System.EnterpriseServices ChangeCurrentBuildSetting This can be used for a lot of things. For example to turn on or off the RegisterForComInterop setting To set conditional compilation variables To set debug info to pdbonly The sky is the limit jeje The following is a sample project file <Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <!-- make sure that the Assembly is in a place where msbuild can find it, a simple way is just to put it in the same directory of your .proj file --> <UsingTask TaskName="SomeUsefulTasks.MSBuild.RemoveCOMReference" AssemblyFile="SomeUsefulTasks.dll"/> <UsingTask TaskName="SomeUsefulTasks.MSBuild.FixOutputPath" AssemblyFile="SomeUsefulTasks.dll"/> <UsingTask TaskName="SomeUsefulTasks.MSBuild.AddProjectReference" AssemblyFile="SomeUsefulTasks.dll"/> <UsingTask TaskName="SomeUsefulTasks.MSBuild.AddSimpleReference" AssemblyFile="SomeUsefulTasks.dll"/> <UsingTask TaskName="SomeUsefulTasks.MSBuild.ChangeProjectBuildSetting" AssemblyFile="SomeUsefulTasks.dll"/>   <ItemGroup> <VSProjects Include="$(Start)\**\*.*proj" /> </ItemGroup>   <!-- Run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:COMReference /p:Start="C:\MyCode" --> <Target Name="COMReference"> <RemoveCOMReference SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" ComReferenceName="MSXML2" /> </Target> <!-- Adds a project reference Run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:AddProjectReference /p:Start="C:\MyCode" /p:ProjectPath="C:\MyCode\MyNewSuperProject\Project1.csproj" --> <Target Name="AddProjectReference"> <AddProjectReference SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" AbsolutePathToProject="$(ProjectPath)"/> </Target> <!-- Adds a reference to a standard assembly Run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:AddSimpleReference /p:Start="C:\MyCode" /p:Reference="System.EnterpriseServices" --> <Target Name="AddSimpleReference"> <AddSimpleReference SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" Reference="$(Reference)" /> </Target>   <!-- Resets the OutputPaths to .\bin\Debug and .\bin\Release Run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:FixOutput /p:Start="C:\MyCode" /p:Reference="System.EnterpriseServices" --> <Target Name="FixOutput"> <FixOutputPath SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" /> </Target> <!-- Adds a reference to a standard assembly There are several options here for example to set the project debug info to pdb-only do this: Run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:ChangeSettingToPDBOnly /p:Start="C:\MyCode" Or run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:ChangeSettingAddAConstant /p:Start="C:\MyCode" Or run with MSBUILD SampleProject.proj /target:SettingComInterop /p:Start="C:\MyCode" -->   <Target Name="ChangeSettingToPDBOnly"> <ChangeProjectBuildSetting SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" ConfigurationType="All" Setting="DebugType" NewValue="pdbonly" /> </Target> <Target Name="ChangeSettingAddAConstant"> <ChangeProjectBuildSetting SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" ConfigurationType="All" Setting="DefineConstants" NewValue="MYNEWVAL" Add="True"/> </Target>     <Target Name="SettingComInterop"> <ChangeProjectBuildSetting SourceFiles="@(VSProjects)" ConfigurationType="All" Setting="RegisterForComInterop" NewValue="true" /> </Target>   </Project> DOWNLOAD CODE AND BINARIES Posted Apr 03 2008, 01:48 PM by Mrojas with no comments Filed under: VIsual Basic .NET, .NET General Tip, VB6 Migration, C#, Software Development

• Get Relative Path

  I had the requirement of creating a MSBuild custom task that opens a .csproj adds a reference to another project. The problem I faced is that references in VisualStudio are generated as relative paths, so I needed something to help me generate relative paths. After some Googleing I finally found this code. It was in a long forum discussion and was posted by a guy named something like Marcin Grzabski. And here it is for posterity. private static string EvaluateRelativePath(string mainDirPath, string absoluteFilePath) { string[] firstPathParts = mainDirPath.Trim(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar).Split(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar); string[] secondPathParts = absoluteFilePath.Trim(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar).Split(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar);   int sameCounter = 0; for (int i = 0; i < Math.Min(firstPathParts.Length,secondPathParts.Length); i++) { if ( !firstPathParts[i].ToLower().Equals(secondPathParts[i].ToLower())) { break; } sameCounter++; }   if (sameCounter == 0) { return absoluteFilePath; }   string newPath = String.Empty; for (int i = sameCounter; i < firstPathParts.Length; i++) { if (i > sameCounter) { newPath += Path.DirectorySeparatorChar; } newPath += ".."; } if (newPath.Length == 0) { newPath = "."; } for (int i = sameCounter; i < secondPathParts.Length; i++) { newPath += Path.DirectorySeparatorChar; newPath += secondPathParts[i]; } return newPath; } And to use is just do somelines like:   String test = EvaluateRelativePath(@"E:\Source_Code\Code\ProjectsGroup1\Project1", @"E:\Source_Code\Code\ProjecstGroup2\Project2");   //This will genearate something like ..\..\ProjectGroup2\Project2 Posted Apr 03 2008, 09:24 AM by Mrojas with 1 comment(s) Filed under: VIsual Basic .NET, .NET General Tip, C#, Software Development