Installing an unmanaged DLL with a VS add-in

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Dmitry Shaporenkov - 30 Nov 2005 09:00 GMT

Hi there,

I have a question concerning best practices for add-in installation. Our
add-in
depends on a free unmanaged dll UxTheme (some UI stuff) which we should deploy
on
the user machine in order for our product to work. The problem is where exactly
to install this DLL.
If it were a managed assembly, we'd have no doubts and install it into the
GAC. However,
an unmanaged dll cannot be installed there. So where should we better install
it? If we install it
into a VS folder (like PrivateAssemblies where we install our own managed
assemblies), there's
a possibility of the versioning problem if some other add-in decides to install
another version
of UxTheme. May be we should modify the PATH enviroment variable and install
the dll into
our product's installation directory?

Your opinions are appreciated.

Regards,
Dmitry Shaporenkov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

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"Gary Chang[MSFT]" - 01 Dec 2005 08:48 GMT

Hi Dmitry,

The UxTheme.dll should be already installed on the systems which could use
it(Windows XP/2003), it is responsible for manipulating the visual styles
on controls. And it would not work in other Windows systems which do not
support the Visual Style.

So in this point, I don't think you need to redistribute the UxTheme.dll
with your add-in setup package. If you are using Visual Style dependant
code, I suggest you need to check for the availability of Visual Style
support in the target machine.

Thanks!

Best regards,

Gary Chang
Microsoft Community Support
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Dmitry Shaporenkov - 01 Dec 2005 09:27 GMT

Hello Gary,

thanks for your reply. Perhaps I was confusing and imprecise. We're really
using a 3rd party wrapper opac.uxtheme.win32.dll borrowed from CodeProject.
This dll implements a better TabControl than the standard Windows' one.
So the original question remains.

Regards,
Dmitry Shaporenkov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

> Hi Dmitry,
>
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights.

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"Gary Chang[MSFT]" - 02 Dec 2005 02:04 GMT

OK Dimitry, I got it, you just mean a third-party opac.uxtheme.win32.dll,
not the Windows' UxTheme.dll:(

The usual location to install an application's DLL is its own directory, so
for a VS add-in, I suggest you can install it to the VS devenv.exe's
directory: %VSInstallDir%\Common7\IDE\.

By the way, if you don't specify the absolute path of that DLL in your
managed assembly's code, then the VS will search the devenv.exe's directory
for the dll first, so on this point, we don't recommend to modify your
target system's PATH environment variable for installing a VS add-in.

Thanks for your understanding!

Best regards,

Gary Chang
Microsoft Community Support
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Dmitry Shaporenkov - 02 Dec 2005 11:00 GMT

Hello Gary,

thanks for your help. I just was thinking that there is a better solution
than just
copying a DLL into VS folders. Hopefully we'll not run into a versioning
problem
with it...

Regards,
Dmitry Shaporenkov
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

> OK Dimitry, I got it, you just mean a third-party
> opac.uxtheme.win32.dll, not the Windows' UxTheme.dll:(
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights.

Reply to this Message

"Gary Chang[MSFT]" - 02 Dec 2005 12:10 GMT

You are welcome, Dmitry, I am glad to discuss this issue with you, have a
nice weekend:)

Good Luck!

Best regards,

Gary Chang
Microsoft Community Support
--------------------
Get Secure! ¡§C www.microsoft.com/security
Register to Access MSDN Managed Newsgroups!
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Installing an unmanaged DLL with a VS add-in

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