Run Visual Studio Experimental Hive as standalone program?

Question

Hi,

I defined my DSL (metamodel) in Visual Studio. Then when I hit RUN, the experimental hive starts. Within those I may build up a model regarding my defined metamodel.

So my question is. Is it possible to export the experimental enviroment to use it as some kind of standalone editor? I want to give the editor to someone else to build the model. But he should not be able to change the DSL (which I defined in Visual Studio). He should only use the DSL in an editor (like visual studio experimental hive).

So my question is. How may I achieve this?

Thank you and best regards,
Ronny

Answer 1

You can run the DSL in Visual Studio Shell, which is a cut-down version of Visual Studio that is intended just for running extensions in this way. Your colleague installs Visual Studio Shell, then installs your DSL.

See Deploying Domain-Specific Language Solutions, the section on Deployment on VS Shell.

Answer 2

Thanks for your reply.

I tried die install the VSIX file into the isolated shell.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh319915(v=vs.110).aspx

But I don't know where to find the name of my isolated shell package?

thank you

Answer 3

This is the name that you gave when you created your isolated shell.

This page might help you : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee410094.aspx

Regards

---

Jean-Marc

Answer 4

Hi,

ok. I tried but I don't understand the workflow.

I created a DSL in Visual Studio 2010.
The project contains packages "Dsl" and "DslPackage". Now I want to export the DSL via VSIX file to a target computer. So I installed the isolated shell runtime on the target computer and tried to doubleclick the VSIX. Without success.

Then I created a new Visual Studio Shell Isolated project and copied the Release folder to the target computer. Also no success in starting the shell there.

So, please can someone give me a walkthrough on how to get an isolated shell running on another computer with my created DSL included?

Thank you.

Answer 5

There is a specific walkthrough on MSDN:

Walkthrough: Adding a Domain-Specific Language Solution to an Isolated Shell

However this assumes you understand the basics of what is means to deploy in the isolate shell. There is quite a lot of other documentation directly or indirectly linked from that page which you should read for background understanding.

Regards

Blair

Answer 6

Hi,

thanks for the walkthrough. But I stuck again. I created the shell project, added the DSL projects and now I'm stuck at point 4 (Add a file to the solution and name it Example.ftree ...). The started isolated shell is empty. I may only go to File->New->Project. There only an empty project appears.

However. When I add a file to the empty project I can't name it. E.g. textfile1.txt. If I add this file, I can't rename it. I don't know, whats going wrong. Maybe the documentation is outdated? E.g. the point "shell dependencies" don't exist in Visual Studio 2010 anymore. I tried it with references. But the result is the same.

Answer 7

Are you able to get an isolated shell application working if you take DSL out of the picture, i.e. by doing the basic isolated shell walkthrough?

I think you will need to pursue this through the main VS extensibility forum, however, as we are not experts in isolated shell deployment.

Regards

Blair