vb6 change reference path - vb6

I am using Visual Basic 6.
There are some component references in my project. Components are registered with Windows using "regsvr32".
So, I have added .ocx from the installation directory to Components.
Let say C:\Program Files\Install Dir\. But, When I see References (.oca) for the control, VB automatically taking path C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98 and I can see .oca files are getting copied.
But, I want to use References from the Install dir only. I tried removing or updating, It says Can't remove control or reference;In use
I have already tried editing .vbp in editor but It does not show .oca Reference path not even default C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98

ActiveX DLLs and OCXs install as shared libraries by design. For this reason you almost never want to install them into a private folder like your C:\Program Files\Install Dir\ unless they are truly private in the sense of being parts of your application that other code should not use.
More generic "utility" libraries such as those provided by Microsoft, 3rd parties, or even those you develop yourself normally install in developer mode by including both design-time licenses (when licensed) and more relevantly here .DEP files. Part of the information contained in such .DEP files is where the library is meant to be installed. In some cases this is System32, in others it is a folder under Common Files, etc.
Now if you truly want a private copy of a DLL or OCX there is a mechanism for that. These are called isolated assemblies and they replaced the earlier, problematic .local mechanism in Win2K.
Those .OCA files are something else entirely and you should not try to reference them or deploy them.
But it is hard to tell what you are really after. A message like:
Can't remove control or reference;In use.
.. is a design-time issue entirely unrelated to the rest of your question.
I'm just not sure what you are trying to do. It sounds like you are trying to re-use libraries private to some other application.

Related

Installing a C# library in Visual Studio and using it on unity

I'm a bit of a noob on that topic so I'm searching for help. I need to install this library (https://github.com/twcclegg/libphonenumber-csharp) for a unity project where I need to check phone numbers.
But as I always made simple games in unity I really don't know how to do that and I don't really know either what to search to find an answer.
If anyone of you knows how to do it, it will really make my day.
Thank you
Once do a build on a project you want to use in Unity, then find the DLL output from the build. I recommend you do Release Builds, but for now if you are not familiar with Visual Studio just use what you were able to build. If there are multiple directories then you only need one - the best one to use would be any labelled ".NET Standard" which it seems you have a .net standard 2.0 directory.
Go to your Unity project in the Assets folder, and if there isn't already a Plugins folder create one. Then in Assets/Plugins create a folder named whatever you want for the library - in this case PhoneNumber would be fine. So you would have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber and you would copy/paste the contents of your NetStandard2 folder there.
In the end you should have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber/PhoneNumber.dll
As soon as you have that dll, you can switch back to Unity and see if it worked by checking the Unity Console for any Errors. You might receive errors saying it could not load the DLL. Almost always if it can not load the DLL it is because of missing dependent DLLs - which is why I said to copy the entire folder contents inside the "NetStandard2" folder since it may contain more than just PhoneNumber.dll - it may have it's necessary dependent dlls also.
If not, you can read the error output and hopefully get a clue as to what dependent dlls are missing. You can also expand the Dependencies in Visual Studio.
Typically the DLL failing to be loaded in Unity is because of missing dependent DLLs. Expanding the Dependencies, which is found under the project name in the Solution Explorer window on the right side of Visual Studio, will show you what libraries it requires. Most of what you see under dependencies (if not all) will require a similarly named dll. Under the netstandard2.0 dependency I see System.Collections.Immutable - so you may need a System.Collections.Immutable.dll which should (usually) be in the output folder when you build the project. You would also need that dll in Unity in your PhoneNumber folder along with PhoneNumber.dll

application that relies on .dll builds correctly, then can't find that DLL at runtime

I have written an application in Visual Studio 2013 that relies on a DLL called WSTP32i1.dll. Both the dll and its associated .lib file are included in the project and it compiles and builds without error. However, when I run it, I get this:
Putting a copy of the DLL in the application folder doesn't help. When I check the Solution Explorer, the DLL appears to be marked "Does not participate in build," which seems wrong but I'm not sure what to change it to.
Any suggestions?
Solution Explorer tree contains source files (cpp, h, rc etc.) used to build executables. Item Type property defines how this file will be processed. DLL is not a valid source file and IDE does not know how to process it. That is why it "Does not participate".
The standard (and the easest) way to link import library is to add reference to DLL project in Common Properties / References page of application project. By default, all DLL and EXE files of your solution are built in the same $(SolutionDir)$(Configuration) directory, so everything is ready to use without any adjustments and post-build events.
If your DLL is built in another solution, make sure that it is placed in the same folder as EXE file, or DLL's folder is specified in PATH environment variable.

VS2010 VC++ Setup Project misses language dll

I have created a Setup Project in VS2010 for my VC++ project and I have it generating a setup file and it includes Primary Output, Content Files, Documentation files and Resource Sattelite DLLs from my VC++ project. My VC++ project is multilanguage and hence includes language DLL files in subdirectories. My issue is that the Setup Project does not include these language DLLs (nor their directories into which they must be placed).
I would have thought that these DLLs were included in the Project Output but they are not. :-/
I know I could add them manually by referencing the files directly, but that means including a absolute reference which I would rather not do. Also, a fixed reference means Release/Debug versions of the file are not handled (only one of them is use regardless of project setting).
Suggestions?
Edit: I have now tried Setup Project, InstallShield LE and WiX. None of them include the localization dll's into the setup project (only managed a working setup with Setup Project, but could see that the other installers did not include the required dll). I can't even fint any reference to this being a know bug and I have really tried hard to find a solution to this.
Found it over there:
C# Creating a setup for multi-language
It worked. I hope it is what you were searching for.

How to do development and build in visual basic 6.0

I am looking for best practice in building multiple visual basic projects(all dll's).We have multiple projects, and our final deliverable will be a dll.Now, one project uses 2 other projects, and another refers to another project.Should projects reference the vbp files, or the dll? If they reference vbp files, how to build all the projects?
After some years with VB6, our projects tended to be structured like this:
All project source (project and source) organized under the source folder.
\project\source
\project\source\project1\
\project\source\project2\
...
All binaries (.dll and .exe) in one bin folder.
\project\bin\
All .dll set as binary compatible with resulting file in the single bin diretory.
After initial build to make the binarycomptible stable, every non breaking build would
be done by using a simple command file build.cmd placed in the folder above the source folder, maybe like this:
"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\VB6.EXE" /M .\source\project1\proj1.vbp
"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\VB6.EXE" /M .\source\project2\proj2.vbp
"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\VB6.EXE" /M .\source\project3\proj3.vbp
del .\\bin\\*.exp
del .\\bin\\*.lib
The build order must be in the order of dependance.
Whenever a breaking change occured, the dependant VB project must be refrenced to the new binary.
Without breaking changes, the build.cmd usually did the job.
Unless you are specifically managing the type libraries externally from VB, you should use project references. If you reference the files, and you modify the public interface in various ways VB will generate new id's for various pieces in the typelibrary which will result in type mismatch errors.
You can use the Preserve Compatability settings to help alleviate this. Make sure your using at least project level (If your doing COM+ then you'll want binary the one based on an already compiled version of the dll)
As for compiling, you can compile a solution file (been a long time since I even had Vb6 installed but I think they were .vbg files).
Back in the day we used Visual Build, and also Visual Make which supported compiling the solution files.
You compile each project separately starting at the lowest level and working your way up the chain.
The big problem of builds with VB6 generally goes back to compatibility issues. The worst case compatibility problems the fix goes something likes this
Build A (with A being the one all the others reference)
Copy A into the compatibility directory
Build B that reference A
Copy B into the compatibility directory
Build C that references B and A
Copy C into the compatibility directory.
and so on.
This is because the typelibs of the COM DLL uses INCLUDE to add in the typelibs of the projects they reference. You can see the Type Libs of a VB6 COM DLL by using the OLE View tool that comes with Visual Studio 6.0.
Many times adding methods or properties will cause the DLL to fail to compile because MS Method of setting up the Typelibs renders them not binary compatible. This fails when the addition is otherwise permitted under the rules of binary compatibility.
The solution that works 90% of the time is to always put the newest version of the DLLs being reference in the compatibility directory.
Once you have a good set you can have a automated builder use it to build the project automatically.
Note that this issues occurs only when you add something that other DLLs reference and they need to maintain binary compatibility.
You need a system of making sure everybody has the correct set of compatibility DLLs to build against.

How are NUnit assemblies appearing in VS "Add Reference" dialog?

So after installing NUnit, the assemblies (nunit.framework, etc.) now appear in the References > Add Reference dialog, but they're not in the %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 dir and there is no NUnit registry entry for the Assembly Path (i.e. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramewokr\AssemblyFolder).
There's also no automatic entries created in the project properties Reference Paths for the NUnit install directory. How the heck are they appearing in the "Add Dialog"?!?! I thought the mentioned way were the only ways assemblies could appear in "Add Reference".
I dug deeper into this at the weekend. Reproduced verbatim from my blog:
Why is NUnit not in the GAC? (or Why does [assembly X] not appear in Visual Studio's Add Reference dialog?)
Because Visual Studio doesn’t look for references in the GAC:
http://blogs.msdn.com/msbuild/archive/2007/04/12/new-reference-assemblies-location.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2004/03/22/93708.aspx
This is by design.
You can either add your files explicitly, which doesn’t work if other people in your team have installed the files somewhere else, for example C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.4.6 vs. C:\Program Files\NUnit-2.4.6. Or (more specifically, because this is the problem I was having this morning) C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.4.6 vs. C:\Program Files (x86)\NUnit 2.4.6. Note the (x86) – my home PC is (as of last weekend) running Vista Ultimate x64.
You have a couple of options:
If your assemblies don’t already have homes, you can put them in the VS PublicAssemblies folder: http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/archive/2004/10/20/245239.aspx
If they already have homes, you can add them to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders registry key: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=306149.
If you’re developing assemblies for other developers to use (i.e. you’re Microsoft or a development tool vendor), you can put these in a subdirectory of C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies directory, and then add that to the AssemblyFolders registry key.
This means that your project files will reference the assembly by name (i.e. name, version, public key token, all that jazz), and it won’t matter where it’s actually installed on your PC.
Note, however, that this doesn’t work as-is on 64-bit, because Visual Studio is a 32-bit application. You actually need to register your stuff under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders, and you should probably register under both.
There are also corresponding HKEY_CURRENT_USER variants of those keys, but (since that roams), it’s not much use (because the paths are usually relative to the machine, anyway).
Strange, [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders] should be the only thing driving this.
Perhaps this snippet from this page is relevant?
If you install the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the following registry subkey is added:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\v3.0
If you install the .NET Framework 3.5, the following registry subkey is added:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\v3.5
On my install of NUnit I have a registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\NUnit 2.4.3
It seems to be the driver of this behaviour on my computer. Once I removed that key the references did not appear.

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