Assembly not appearing in the Add Reference Dialog box for .NET CF ...

[Vipul Pathak]

Hi Every one,

I am working on deployment of a library. When the library installs on a
user's machine, I want that the installed assemblies should get listed in
the "Add Reference" (AddRef) dialog box of the user's Visual Studio .NET.

I tried to make some entries into registry so that the assemblies can be
shown in the "AddRef" dialog. I succeeded in showing them for VS 2005 and VS
2003 for .NET project types.

The problem is:
When a user starts Visual Studio .NET 2003 and opt to create/open a device
project (PDA / Win CE / Pocket PC). When the project opens and user open the
Add Reference dialog box, my assemblies are not listed there.

Visual Studio Application Type Assembly appearing in
Release (.NET /Device) Add Reference Dialog?
============================================
2003 .NET Yes
2003 Pocket PC NO :-(
2005 .NET Yes
2005 Pocket PC Yes

I tried to place my assembly path entries in:
(1)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework\v1.0.5000\PocketP
C\AssemblyFoldersEx
(2)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework\v1.0.5000\Windows
CE\AssemblyFoldersEx
(3)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework\v1.0.5000.0\Pocke
tPC\AssemblyFoldersEX
(4)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework\v1.0.5000.0\Windo
wsCE\AssemblyFoldersEX
(5)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7.1\AssemblyFolders

It works for all the rest 3, but didn't worked for Visual Studio 2003
(Device Projects).

When I copied my assemblies to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
2003\CompactFrameworkSDK\ (which is specified in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETCompactFramework\sdkInstallRoot),
then my assemblies are visible in the AddRef dialog box.

Is there any way, tell Visual Studio 2003 that pick my assemblies from
<PATH>, instead of copying them to sdkInstallRoot ?

Thanks,


*(Vipul)() ;

===============
VIPUL PATHAK
India.

 

[Peter Foot [MVP]]

VS2003 doesn't use the AssemblyFoldersEx registry key for device projects
which is used on VS2005, the only solution is to copy your assemblies to the
CompactFrameworkSDK folder for VS2003 as you have already tried.

Peter