Hello Rick,

[SNIP]

OMG, if the commandbar control guru Rick can't get this to work, what chance
will we the mere mortals stand. <g>!!

Yes, this sux, but however thanks to your blog entries from way back I managed
to get it to work (in a fashion). When I ran my add-in outside of debugging
(F5), i.e normal usage of VS I had similar problems as you; my pop-up menu
showed OK, but the actual controls didn't. For me it turned out it was an
exception thrown, that I caught but didn't show. In my case the actual controls
were alredy created, so when I tried to add them again an exception happened
(I didn't tear them down at dis-connect), and I never managed to get the
Commnds.Item method to work to check for a command. I ended up loading the
commands in a hash table and then check against the hash table.

Anyway, here're some code that works for me.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

public void OnConnection(object application, ext_ConnectMode connectMode,
object addInInst, ref Array custom) {
       

 if(connectMode == ext_ConnectMode.ext_cm_Startup) {

   _app = (DTE2)application;
   _addIn = (AddIn)addInInst;
   CommandBarPopup depMainPop = null;
   cmdHt = new Hashtable();
   commands = (Commands2)_app.Commands;

   Hashtable ht = new Hashtable();
   //loop through all the commands and if they belong to this proj
   //add them into a hash table
   foreach (Command c in commands) {
     if (c.Name.Contains("DeployAddIn"))
       cmdHt.Add(c.Name, c);
     }

   object []contextGUIDS = new object[] { };
   string toolsMenuName;

   try {
                   
    ResourceManager resourceManager = new ResourceManager("DeployAddIn.CommandBar",
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly());
    CultureInfo cultureInfo = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(_app.LocaleID);
    string resourceName = String.Concat(cultureInfo.TwoLetterISOLanguageName,
"Tools");
    toolsMenuName = resourceManager.GetString(resourceName);
   }
   catch {
     //We tried to find a localized version of the word Tools, but one was
not found.
     //  Default to the en-US word, which may work for the current culture.
     toolsMenuName = "Tools";
   }

   //Place the command on the tools menu.
   //Find the MenuBar command bar, which is the top-level command bar holding
all the main menu items:
   Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars.CommandBar menuBar = ((Microsoft.VisualStudio.CommandBars.CommandBars)_app.CommandBars)["MenuBar"];

   //Find the Tools command bar on the MenuBar command bar:
   CommandBarControl toolsControl = menuBar.Controls[toolsMenuName];
   CommandBarPopup toolsPopup = (CommandBarPopup)toolsControl;
   try {
     depMainPop = (CommandBarPopup)toolsPopup.Controls.Add(vsCommandBarType.vsCommandBarTypePopup,
1, "", 1, true);
     depMainPop.Caption = "SQL CLR Deployment";
     depMainPop.BeginGroup = true;
     depMainPop.Visible = true;
         
     //Add a command to the Commands collection:
     AddCmd(depMainPop.CommandBar, "DepProp", "Deployment Properties", "Allows
you to set properties for the deployment task.", 1);
   }

   catch(Exception ex1) {
     MessageBox.Show(ex1.Message, "Error");
   }
 }
}

private object[] AddCmd(CommandBar parent, string name, string caption, string
decription, int pos) {
 object[] contextGUIDS = new object[] { };
 string cmdName = string.Format("{0}.{1}", this.GetType().ToString(), name);
 Command cmd = null;
     
 //Add a command to the Commands collection:
 try {
   //look for the command in the hashtable - I tried to use the Commands.Item
method but it won't work
   cmd = (Command)cmdHt[cmdName];
  //this is what I tried to do, but I'm getting an invalid cast exception
at runtime with the code below
  //and if I just do System.Type.Missing, the compiler complains
  //cmd = commands.Item(cmdName, (int)System.Type.Missing);
   
  if (cmd == null) {
    cmd = commands.AddNamedCommand2(_addIn, name, caption, decription, true,
59, ref contextGUIDS, (int)vsCommandStatus.vsCommandStatusSupported + (int)vsCommandStatus.vsCommandStatusEnabled,
(int)vsCommandStyle.vsCommandStyleText, vsCommandControlType.vsCommandControlTypeButton);
    cmdHt.Add(cmd.Name, cmd);
  }
       
 }

 catch (Exception e) {
   MessageBox.Show(e.Message, "Error");
 }

 //Add a control for the command to the menu:
 if ((cmd != null) && (parent != null)) {
   cmd.AddControl(parent, pos);
 }
 else
   MessageBox.Show("Command or parent == null");
     
 return contextGUIDS;
}

Hope this helps.

Niels