Question

I have my own custom tool for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. It consists of 5 assemblies: 3 assemblies with code that are used heavily in my other projects, 1 assembly-wrapper above VS2008 SDK and an assembly with the tool.

If I’d debug my tool from visual studio, using “Run external program” option with command line “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe” and arguments “/ranu /rootsuffix Exp” all works perfectly.

After that I’m trying to deploy it to my working VS copy, not to experimental hive, doing: gacutil /i Asm1.dll for all my assemblies and doing RegAsm Asm1.dll only for assembly with custom tool. Neither of utils prints any error, all work as planned, even registry keys appear. But my tool doesn’t work (error occurred “Cannot find custom tool ‘TransportGeneratorTool’ on this system”) even after PC restart. What did I do wrong?

Wrapper looks like that:

[ComVisible(true)]
public abstract class CustomToolBase : IVsSingleFileGenerator, IObjectWithSite
{
    #region IVsSingleFileGenerator Members
    int IVsSingleFileGenerator.DefaultExtension(out string pbstrDefaultExtension)
    {
        pbstrDefaultExtension = ".cs";
        return 0;
    }

    int IVsSingleFileGenerator.Generate(string wszInputFilePath, string bstrInputFileContents, string wszDefaultNamespace, IntPtr[] rgbOutputFileContents, out uint pcbOutput, IVsGeneratorProgress pGenerateProgress)
    {
        GenerationEventArgs gea = new GenerationEventArgs(
            bstrInputFileContents,
            wszInputFilePath,
            wszDefaultNamespace,
            new ServiceProvider(Site as Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider)
                .GetService(typeof(ProjectItem)) as ProjectItem,
            new GenerationProgressFacade(pGenerateProgress)
                );

        if (OnGenerateCode != null)
        {
            OnGenerateCode(this, gea);
        }

        byte[] bytes = gea.GetOutputCodeBytes();

        int outputLength = bytes.Length;
        rgbOutputFileContents[0] = Marshal.AllocCoTaskMem(outputLength);
        Marshal.Copy(bytes, 0, rgbOutputFileContents[0], outputLength);
        pcbOutput = (uint)outputLength;
        return VSConstants.S_OK;
    }
    #endregion

    #region IObjectWithSite Members
    void IObjectWithSite.GetSite(ref Guid riid, out IntPtr ppvSite)
    {
        IntPtr pUnk = Marshal.GetIUnknownForObject(Site);
        IntPtr intPointer = IntPtr.Zero;
        Marshal.QueryInterface(pUnk, ref riid, out intPointer);
        ppvSite = intPointer;
    }

    void IObjectWithSite.SetSite(object pUnkSite)
    {
        Site = pUnkSite;
    }
    #endregion

    #region Public Members
    public object Site { get; private set; }

    public event EventHandler<GenerationEventArgs> OnGenerateCode;

    [ComRegisterFunction]
    public static void Register(Type type)
    {
        using (var parent = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0", true))
            foreach (CustomToolRegistrationAttribute ourData in type.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CustomToolRegistrationAttribute), false))
                ourData.Register(x => parent.CreateSubKey(x), (x, name, value) => x.SetValue(name, value));
    }

    [ComUnregisterFunction]
    public static void Unregister(Type type)
    {
        using (var parent = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0", true))
            foreach (CustomToolRegistrationAttribute ourData in type.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CustomToolRegistrationAttribute), false))
                ourData.Unregister(x => parent.DeleteSubKey(x, false));
    }

    #endregion
}

My tool code:

[ComVisible(true)]
[Guid("55A6C192-D29F-4e22-84DA-DBAF314ED5C3")]
[CustomToolRegistration(ToolName, typeof(TransportGeneratorTool))]
[ProvideObject(typeof(TransportGeneratorTool))]
public class TransportGeneratorTool : CustomToolBase
{
    private const string ToolName = "TransportGeneratorTool";

    public TransportGeneratorTool()
    {
        OnGenerateCode += GenerateCode;
    }

    private static void GenerateCode(object s, GenerationEventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof (Parser.System));
            using (var reader = new StringReader(e.InputText))
            using (var writer = new StringWriter(e.OutputCode))
            {
                Generator.System = (Parser.System) serializer.Deserialize(reader);
                Generator.System.Namespace = e.Namespace;
                Generator.GenerateSource(writer);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            e.Progress.GenerateError(ex.ToString());
        }
    }
}

Resulting registry keys:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators\{FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators\{FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}\TransportGeneratorTool]
@="TransportGeneratorTool"
"CLSID"="{55a6c192-d29f-4e22-84da-dbaf314ed5c3}"
"GeneratesDesignTimeSource"=dword:00000001
"GeneratesSharedDesignTimeSource"=dword:00000001

Here is the code of my custom attribute (it is in wrapper assembly):

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple = true, Inherited = true)]
public class CustomToolRegistrationAttribute : RegistrationAttribute
{
    public CustomToolRegistrationAttribute(string name, Type customToolType)
    {
        Name = name;
        CustomToolType = customToolType;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The type that implements the custom tool.  This starts 
    /// as MyCustomTool by default in the template.
    /// </summary>
    public Type CustomToolType { get; set; }

    public string Name { get; set; }

    #region RegistrationAttribute abstract member implementations
    public override void Register(RegistrationContext context)
    {
        Register(x => context.CreateKey(x), (x, key, value) => x.SetValue(key, value));
    }

    public void Register<T>(Func<string, T> keyCreator, Action<T, string, object> valueCreator)
    {
        var keyName = CreateKeyName(Name);
        var key = keyCreator(keyName);

        valueCreator(key, string.Empty, Name);
        valueCreator(key, "CLSID", CustomToolType.GUID.ToString("B"));
        valueCreator(key, "GeneratesDesignTimeSource", 1);
        valueCreator(key, "GeneratesSharedDesignTimeSource", 1);

        var disposable = key as IDisposable;
        if (disposable != null)
            disposable.Dispose();
    }

    private static string CreateKeyName(string name)
    {
        return string.Format(@"Generators\{0}\{1}", vsContextGuids.vsContextGuidVCSProject, name);
    }

    public override void Unregister(RegistrationContext context)
    {
        Unregister(context.RemoveKey);
    }

    public void Unregister(Action<string> keyRemover)
    {
        keyRemover(CreateKeyName(Name));
    }

    #endregion
}

Answer 1

My solution is to make a setup project. I get the registry settings from the pkgdef file by adding the following to the csproj file of the package:

<Target Name="GeneratePackageRegistryFiles">
  <Exec Command="&quot;$(VSSDK90Install)VisualStudioIntegration\Tools\Bin\RegPkg.exe&quot; /root:Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 /codebase &quot;$(TargetPath)&quot; /regfile:&quot;$(OutDir)$(TargetName).reg&quot;" />
</Target>
<PropertyGroup> 
  <BuildDependsOn>$(BuildDependsOn);GeneratePackageRegistryFiles;</BuildDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>

When building look in the output directory you should find a .reg file which you can import in the setup project.

Obviously you can run the regpkg.exe from the command-line if modifying the project is not an option.