Custom extensions

[Anonymous User]

Original User: 164549

None of my custom developed extensions are showing up under Customize->Extensions, yet all the ESRI extensions are there.  Is there some new development process or different setting needed to make them show up?

[RalfGottschalk]

Andry,

Thank you for the post, you bring up some good points.  Unfortunately I don't have the answers to your questions at this time, but this information needs to be in the documentation for 9.4 final.

I logged an enhancement request for you (NIM052616) to provide documentation on how to create and deploy components using ecfg files.

[Anonymous User]

Original User: natalie.pieper

Hi Vanesch, Hi Gottralf,

after installing beta 2 I experienced a nasty surprise: where is the (undocumented) parameter /l wich made it possible to register vb6 dll's for ArcGIS 9.4?

Yes, I know. VB6 is not supported. Yes, it's our own responsibility to get it work on ArcGIS 10. Yes, there is no guarantee that a vb6 dll will work in ArcGIS 10.

We will migrate nearly all older products that are still in VB6 to VB.NET for ArcGIS 10.

But there are some older products that we will need just for only a few more years. Let me explain it to you. It just takes place a change in cadastral technology in Germany. For some federal states the change has already occurred; others will follow within the next 1-2 years.
So in a few years, nobody needs the older property information systems any more.
It's not economically to migrate the old extensions and converters to .NET für their short rest of life. They just work in ArcGIS 10 with some simple changes when registered with /l.

Please do not build an artificial barrier to VB6 and keep parameter "/l" in esriregasm - yes, of course, without any warranty that it will work for all dlls!

Regards
Natalie

[CarlHorton]

"If you installed the ArcObjects SDK you should be able to right-click on the dll and see 'Register 9.4 Assembly'."

I've tried this and keep getting a Registration failed message.

[Anonymous User]

Original User: gottralf

Based on the feedback that we have received from those participating on the beta forums and from the feedback we received through support incidents, we understand that many people are being impacted by this and require some help.

It is important for customers to recompile their application for each release because there are no guarantees that a component that worked for one release will continue to work in the next release. 

However, we understand that people have been relying on this workflow in the past, and they have been lucky that the component still worked at the next version of the software.  Because of the changes to the registration mechanism at 10 these components don�??t show up in an ArcGIS application anymore. 

Natalie, you raise a really good point. You and probably many customers have initiated the migration, but you have a few components that have not been migrated for whatever reason.  It could be political, resources, or time.

We will provide documentation that will describe how customers can register their legacy components with ArcGIS 10.  Like you said, ESRI will not provide support for this workflow, so if it doesn�??t work you will not be able to call Technical Support.  There will be no guarantees that this registration process will work, and no guarantees that the component will work in the new version. 

I don�??t have specifics on when the instructions will be released or what form it will be in, but it will probably be a blog or a KB doc.   

Thanks for your feedback.

[NatalieCassar-Pieper]

Hi gottralf,

thanks for your reply. I think it's a good solution for older components.

Regards,
Natalie

[Anonymous User]

Original User: chorton

So has the kb or blog article been posted about registering legacy components?  If not when can we expect it?

[JeffJenness]

I am also anxious to see this kb or blog article.  Is it out yet?  When should we expect it?
Jeff Jenness

[Anonymous User]

Original User: ajoos

Thank you for the post, you bring up some good points.  Unfortunately I don't have the answers to your questions at this time, but this information needs to be in the documentation for 9.4 final.

I logged an enhancement request for you (NIM052616) to provide documentation on how to create and deploy components using ecfg files.

Hi Ralf

Any news on that enhancement request yet? I've noticed that the XML schema slightly changed from ArcGIS 9.4 Beta to ArcGIS 10 Pre-Final, and would like to update my XML-generator accordingly. A final and definitive XSD schema would be great.

Thanks & best regards,
Andry

[MarcN]

I am also interested in this topic. Currently we have a problem because we use our own COM categories in our extension. So this does no longer work as before because ESRIRegAsm does not write the information to the registry and so the default COM mechanisms to retrieve the classes registered for a COM category do not work. Currently we use a workaround and do a double registration first using regsvr32 and then esriregasm.

[Anonymous User]

Original User: kirkktx

Instead of using a COM Category (i.e. the registry) to discover assemblies at run time, I would consider scanning a folder, perhaps relative to Assembly.Location, then use Assembly.LoadFrom to load dlls that are found.  Using reflection, you could scan the types in the assembly and call IExtensionManagerAdmin.AddExtension to load each class that implements IExtension, or perhaps only those marked with some attribute.