I am looking for some guidance on the standard way of implementing plugins in D365 CE or what Microsoft recommends.
I generally follow this practice -
1. Have only 1 CRM Solution and one plug-in assembly (DLL) for all these plugin steps.
2. Have a separate ".cs" file for each plugin in this project.
3. Each plugin corresponds to specific functionality. So in case, we want to disable any functionality, it could be easily done without changing the code.
4. Have only 1 CRM Solution for all these plugins.
Looking forward to some expert guidance.
Thanks!
In this video former MVP Mitch Milam talks three plugin solution layout options. He recommends the approach you outline above, and that is the one I typically use.
I also generally use a Console app to test and debug plugins. For maximum flexibility, I often put all the business logic into a Visual Studio shared project. Then I reference that shared project from both the plugin project and the Console App.
While the Console app could reference a DLL, having the logic in a shared project easily allows me to also use the logic in a workflow project if I want. Ultimately, the shared project gives me the option run the code as a plugin, a workflow, or a Console app.
Here's an example:
The .Cmd project is the console app. The one with the double diamond icon is the shared project (which cannot be compiled on its own - it must be referenced by one or more compilable projects).
Related
I have a VS Project/Solution (.NET 6.0) that contains a ton of core functionality. WinForms, Classes, etc.
My intention is to copy/duplicate this project and customize it for each individual application (if you are curious, this is a project interacting with collaborative robots. While the core of the project will be similar across multiple robots, each individual robot will need its own tweaking (GUI, functionality, etc). I would like to keep these as individual projects and not just add new robots to the base project. I want to keep it to one project per robot. I have my reasons, from licensing to support.
My question is: what is the best practice way to copy/duplicate a project and rename it? These are the goals:
Keep the Base/Ref project intact so it can be used as a basis for new projects.
Be able to push each 'new' project to a new location/repo in GitHub.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!
What is the preferred solution for Exrin project layout when adding a database?
The sample Tesla app had a separate project for the Services and another separate app for the Repository. With the removal of both of those projects in the latest template, it makes the most sense for it to go within the Logic project, but I'm curious if the author had a different preferred implementation.
The Tesla Sample project is designed for a very large app, and Service and Repository don't need to be separated out into a separate project, they can all be referenced directly in the logic app, as per this diagram.
This is the project setup, I now recommend for most projects.
i am a good but not so advanced .NET Developer. This is more of a Expert to juniors knowledge transfer request.
I was thinking, in Visual Studio you can Add projects inside a solution. Of-course these projects will carry different namespace.
My question is
Why to build a project inside a solution
When it is good\useful to build multiple project inside a solution.
I suppose you mean more than one project in a solution, right?
We use it mainly from a library perspective. You receive more than one assembly and in this way you can share or exchange only parts of you application. This is for example helpful if you have a bug in your application which touches only a part of your app. In this case you can fix and exchange only the bad assembly instead of the whole app.
It allows you to separate parts of an application. Your GUI, business logic, and data access can all be separate.
In addition, projects within a solution can reference each other with "project references". This ensures they all build with the same configuration: all Debug or all Release. Also, a projects can build when the projects they reference change.
I don't quite understand the utility of Xcode 4's workspaces. What are they used for, and how do they aid with development in Xcode?
E.g. you have a library, that you use in two applications. You will most likely have an own project for this library, correct? Now, you are free to treat this library as an independent project with versioning and regularly do releases; but this can be very cumbersome, if you need to change the library code pretty often and all these changes are directly caused by changes to your two applications using that library. Instead you can create two projects, one for each applications and then two workspaces, one consisting out of the library project and app 1, the other one out of the library project and app 2. Opening a workspace always opens both relevant projects, workspace build settings automatically apply to both of them, they both build to the same build directory (which is actually chosen by Xcode automatically, but it is chosen by workspace, not by project) and when you do global searches, search for symbols, etc. Xcode will always do so in both projects. Further if you change build settings to the library project, because you have to, the changes are also correctly set when you open up the other workspace, which is an advantage to directly importing the library files to two different projects. And now think of 50 libraries, 20 apps and each of them uses various of those 50 libraries.
This may not be the idea Apple had in mind, it may not be the perfect use case for workspaces and other people may have better ideas, but this is one use case I can think of.
A workspace is mainly used to manage multiple projects in one logical space. This facilitates the management of dependencies between multiple projects. Very useful when you are involved with open source development.
I have 3 projects in my solution that I want to deploy. Is there a nice and quick way of using Visual Studio's setup projects to deploy all three apps using one MSI and letting the user decide which apps he wants to install during the install process?
I have setup projects for the 3 individual apps, I also have an overarching setup project that has the output of those other three projects. Am I on the right track or is there a better way?
I think you probably want merge modules. Accrding to MSDN:
A merge module is a standard feature of Microsoft Windows Installer that packages components together with any related files, resources, registry entries, and setup logic. You can use merge modules to install components that multiple applications share. You cannot install merge modules directly. You must merge them into deployment projects.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827025
In your case, each application would be a merge module and you would need to provide some UI to select which applications you would like to install. You could modify one of the default page templates to do that.
If using WiX (which I suggest doing) then you break each project down into its components, each project would be represented as a Feature in WiX/MSI which you can do conditional installs on. The standard tree dialog on installers for selecting features is based on this and the WiX examples have a ready made UI that uses it.
As for merge modules the lead developer of WiX was involved in the early creation of the Merge Module specs and he reccomends using .wixlibs now. See Here
WiX v3 Docs
I also have a similar requirement, however i used merge modules but cant seem to find a way of selecting which specific msm to install and which not to. As i understand there is a no condition property which can be set on msm's while integrating them with msi's. Please let me know if there is some alternate way of doin so..
Thanks,
Apn
You can use Wix as i've posted here -->
VS 2005 Setup Projects: Deploy Many Projects With One MSI