I have a windows form application in which I'm attempting to utilize a plugin (class library). In the code I have it load the assembly from a dll file, which means I have not been able to debug. Furthermore I have not found out how to compile the library so I've had to use the debuged dll version for testing. I've run into a bug in which I create a new object and send that data through an interface to the plugin in an attempt to retrieve a blank slate group box from the plugin. However instead of reading the parameter as a new object i managed to step through the code once (don't ask me how, I don't know and I haven't been able to repeat it) and it appeared that the code was registering the parameter as "nothing" thus why I received a null reference error in the main program.
Is there a better way to debug this mechanism and find out where the problem is? Any ideas on what the problem could be. As I read over this is seems somewhat vague and I'm not sure how to describe it, but I'm willing to host a connect now meeting if anyone is willing to look at what is going on and I'm not making myself understood very well.
I'm not sure if I follow exactly what you're doing but I usually find that the best way to debug a class library is by in the solution for the class library I add a new project, either a WinForms one or a Console one, I then set this new project as the start up project and add a reference to the Class Library project (via the Project tab in the Add Reference dialog).
You'll then be able to call the methods in the class library from the other project and you can put breakpoints anywhere to see what's really going on easily.
Ok, so the problem was that any time you edit the class library you have to compile (and the only way I know how is debugging, I can't find a compile button and the publish button doesn't work and building doesn't appear to make a dll). But anyways you have to compile, transfer the file so you are reading the most recent one. If you edit the code during runtime it does NOT update the dll in use...which was my problem.
Related
I have a DirectShow filter (MonogramAAC encoder) successfully compiling. It also registers successfully, however, when I try to instantiate the filter in GrapheditPlus, it shows a CO_E_ERRORINDLL. After inspecting the filter properties under GraphEditPlus, the filter was actually linked to RegSvr32.exe instead of the actual host DLL!
Here's the evidence:
I'm sure the .def file in the linker is correct, I also tested that it IS being considered by the compiler and it is correctly pointing to the filter DLL.
A little bakground info:
I couldn't get the original project to compile under Visual Studio 2017 after automated conversion. (I couldn't resolve strange MFC and runtime library linker errors between the Monogram filter and the libaac.lib library, that I'm also able to compile successfully).
Finally I decided to recreate a brand-new VS2017 Project mimicking the original one and got it to compile and register (with the only warning being the mismatch between the Project name and the output library), but obviously I missed something important while recreating the project.
Any pointers?
Ok, I managed to find the reason for this unexpected behavior in this old post.
RegSvr32 just calls the DllRegisterServer entry point in your code.
What gets written to the registry is entirely up to your filter. If
you are using the standard baseclass call to AMovieDllRegisterServer2
as your DllRegisterServer, I would suspect that something went wrong
in setting up g_hInst, which should have been done by the call
DllEntryPoint in your DllMain.
…
The DllMain is not being called, so g_hInst stays 0 and
GetModuleFileNameA(...) returns the name of the currently executing
program instead of my filter.
The filter is using MFC (dynamically linked), and its DllMain() version is not calling the DllEntryPoint() function. I had to override the MFC DllMain() by adding extern "C" { int _afxForceUSRDLL; } as described in an answer to this question and call DllEntryPoint() myself to fix the registration problem. (I also found a missing #define was the reason for the property page not showing up).
I want to implement a Webbrowser in my vb.net (2008)-project, however, I don't like the inbuilt IE.
I also remembered that is was kind of easy to implement a mozilla-tool like the gecko-webbrowser in the past...
It was kinf of more complicated than I remember, as I had to dwnload xulrunner and Skybound.Gecko.dll which both probably have to be included in any publishing of the finished project... I also defined x86 as target CPU and made all the needed steps to use a GeckoWebBrowser within my Application. I also called Skybound.Gecko.Xpcom.Initialize(My.Application.Info.DirectoryPath & "/xulrunner") before compiling it.
However, when I try GeckoWebBrowser1.navigate("http://...") (The element was inserted with this name per designer) the IDE tells me that an objectreference is not set to a objectinstance as if GeckoWebBrowser1 isn't defined yet... but the GeckoWebBrowser1.Created attribute is giving back true.
Does anybody know why it isn't working yet?
I have the same error in my solution. Try to use GeckoFX assembly. I use 15 version dll and error fix.
https://bitbucket.org/geckofx/geckofx-16.0/downloads
I have a simple question. Coming from a java background and having worked extensively with eclipse, netbeans or any other java IDE, is quite nice to have the possibility to add a main method to a class and execute it within the IDE, with just a click, and see the output.
I was looking for the same possibility within xcode4/objective-c but I couldn't find a way. From time to time, I like testing small piece of software, without compiling and running the whole project.
As I am still "thinking" in Java, could you suggest the proper way to achieve this with xcode4 from an "objective-c developer point of view" ?
thanks
There's not really a lightweight way to do this, but you have two options that I can think of depending on whether you want to keep the harness code you've written.
If you do, then you'd need to make a new target in your project for each class you drive with a harness, and have that target build just the class you are driving and a simple file with just the main code to drive that class.
If you don't, then you could make a target with a main, and each time you want to drive a different class, change which files are built, change the code in main, and rebuild.
This is assuming that you want to avoid both running and compiling the rest of your code. If you don't mind compiling everything, you could have one test-harness target that builds all of your classes, and either change main on the fly, or use #ifdefs or a runtime argument to decide which helper code to run.
I'd like to know if there is a way to mix C# and Obj-C code in one project. Specifically, I'd like to use Cocos2D for my UI in Obj-C and call some MonoTouch C#-Library that does some computations and get some values back. Is there a way to do this? Or maybe the other way around, i. e. building in MonoTouch and calling Cocos2D-functions?
Thanks.
The setup that you describe is possible, but the pipeline is not as smooth as it is when you do your entire project in MonoTouch. This is in fact how we bootstrapped MonoTouch: we took an existing Objective-C sample and we then replaced the bits one by one with managed code.
We dropped those samples as they bitrot.
But you can still get this done, use the mtouch's --xcode command line option to generate a sample program for you, and then copy the bits that you want from the generated template.m into your main.m. Customize the components that you want, and just start the XCode project from there.
During your development cycle, you will continue to use mtouch --xcode
Re: unknown (google):
We actually did this as described.
See this page for a quick start, but the last code segment on that page is wrong, because it's omitting the "--xcode"-parameter.
http://monotouch.net/Documentation/XCode
What you have to do to embed your Mono-EXE/DLL into an Objective-C program is to compile your source with SharpDevelop, then run mtouch with these parameters:
/Developer/MonoTouch/usr/bin/mtouch --linksdkonly --xcode=output_dir MyMonoAssembly.exe
This only works with the full version of MonoTouch. The trial does not allow to use the "--xcode"-argument . The "--linksdkonly"-argument is needed if you want mtouch to keep unreferenced classes in the compiled output, otherwise it strips unused code.
Then mtouch compiles your assembly into native ARM-code (file extension .s) and also generates a XCode template which loads the Mono-Runtime and your code inside the XCode/ObjC-program. You can now use this template right away and include your Obj-C-code or extract the runtime loading code from the "main.m"-file and insert it into your existing XCode-project. If you use an existing project you also have to copy all .exe/.dll/.s files from the xcode-output-dir that mtouch made.
Now you have your Mono-Runtime and assembly loaded in an XCode-project. To communicate with your assembly, you have to use the Mono-Embedding-API (not part of MonoTouch, but Mono). These are C-style API calls. For a good introduction see this page.
Also the Mono-Embedding-API documentation might be helpful.
What you have to do now in your Obj-C-code is to make Embedding-API calls. These steps might involve: Get the application domain, get the assembly, get the image of the assembly, locate the class you want to use, instantiate an object from that class, find methods in class, call methods on object, encapsulate method arguments in C-arrays and pass them to the method-call, get and extract method return values.
There are examples for this on the embedding-api-doc-page above.
You just have to be careful with memory consumption of your library, as the mono runtime takes some memory as well.
So this is the way from Obj-C to C#. If you want to make calls from C#/Mono into your Obj-C-program, you have to use the MonoTouch-bindings, which are described here.
You could also use pure C-method calls from the embedding/P/Invoke-API.
Hope this gets you started.
Over the weekend it emerged that someone has been porting Cocos2D to .NET, so you could also do the whole work on .NET:
http://github.com/city41/CocosNet
Cocos2D started as a Python project, that later got ported to Objective-C, and now there is an active effort to bring it to C#. It is not finished, but the author is accepting patches and might be a better way forward.
Calling Objective-C from MonoTouch definitely looks possible. See the Objective-C selector examples
What library are you calling? Perhaps there's an Objective-C equivalent.
I've got a really strange error and any light that anyone can shed on this would be greatly appreciated.
I made some changes to some VB6 source which builds a COM object. The automated build which builds our app returned an error. No problem I thought--I'll just back out my changes. Well backing out my changes isn't making the problem go away.
Specifically when I attempt to build the app via a .vbg file, with a command line like path\to\vb6\vb6 ProjectFile.vbg /make
I get a message
"Compile Error in File '', Line : Object library
invalid or contains references to object definitions that could not be
found."
As I said, I reverted the source code so I'm really stumped as to why this error is still occurring. Any VB6 gurus around who might be able to point me at an answer?
I can post the exact code in question but the fact that it was building correctly, stopped building correctly and now refuses to build correctly makes me think this is not a problem with my code but rather some problem in the environment. Like something got put in the registry as a result of the previous build error.
Any tips, hints, or suggestions greatly welcome. I realize my question is a bit sketchy but I'm not even sure what's important to include and what isn't.
EDIT 1:
Thanks for the excellent suggestions guys. I think it is something to do with VB6 doing some sort of auto-registration.
Just to add a bit more detail: this problem does not occur when I build the referenced vbp file from the IDE. It only happens on the make on the .vbg which contains the vbp. Also the build tool in question automatically pulls latest source and the error happens on both my local box and the dedicated build box.
EDIT 2:
Hi again all,
The release engineering fellow figured out how to get this to build in his build environment so it's currently ok. Once we're past this crunch, I'll try to interrogate him about what he did and share the details with everyone.
Thanks again for all the great suggestions. This is what's so great about SO; that is, I asked about a 10-year-old technology and I got several great and on-point ideas.
Make sure that the VBG and all the VBP's got rolled back as well. That error is consistent with a project trying to reference a CLSID that is no longer valid for the dependency. Have you tried loading up the project group and building from the IDE, if that works and you save and check in all the changes to the group and project files, you might be fixed up.
I'm guessing the fact that you mention that it was a COM component might be the source of the problem. If any of the public method's or properties have changed then I seem to remember that VB6 will change the interface GUIDs and auto register the new ones.
My suggestion would be to check the registry to look for any mention of the component name, make a note of any associated CLSIDs, back up the registry, and then delete the references.
As cmsjr mentions it could also be a bad CLSID reference in your .vbp files.
The other option is that the failure has caused a problem with some .tlb (type library) or olb (object library) files.
The best thing to do is move all your compatibility DLL to a separate and combined directory. The reason for this is control over what VB6 is using to check for binary compatibility. In addition the Typelibs that are generated IMPORT the references. So if you using Binary DLL Ver 10 for compatibility however the import is pulling in Binary DLL Ver 9 you will have issues. By keeping all the libraries in a single folder and pointing your projects to the DLLs in that folder you ensure that the respective TypeLib Import the correct version.
Finally if you have multiple levels of DLL reference each other. You may run into mysterious error where the VB6 is unable to compile using binary compatibility. In such cases you need to compile the lowest DLL in the hierarchy (Utility DLL perhaps) copy it over into the compatibility folders. Work your way up the chain until everything compiles in one shot again.
This is because if have DLL A reference DLL B which Reference DLL C. VB6 will get sometimes get confused if you make a change to A and C. will compile fine but A will not until the compatibility libraries are updated.
Hunt down and delete any .obj and .exp files that may be lying around from the previous failed build.
You will have to open the project & re-type in the lines that you changed.
Save the project alongwith VBG and re-compile after that.
I think that will fix it.
EDIT: The idea is that the cls/bas file remember the class (CLSID) that you used. So, if you change the references but don't change the lines in the cls/bas - it is a mismatch of type (what was referenced vs what is typed in cls/bas file).