How to handle Serialization Issue with a Custom Host Implementing ITextTemplatingEngineHost

Question

As I noted in an earlier post :Source Code for a Working Implementation of ITextTemplatingEngineHost, I am trying to build a custom host for T4.  The answer to my query about available source code for a working custom host lead to the code in the MSDN documentation.  That code worked.  Using that code as a baseline, I was able to isolate the cause of my problem. 

My situation is that I want to expose the custom host in the template file.  Following the example in MSDN, I wrote the following code for the ProvideTemplatingAppDomain:

        public AppDomain ProvideTemplatingAppDomain(string content)
        {
            // This host will provide a new application domain each time the
            // engine processes a text template.
            // -------------------------------------------------------------
            return AppDomain.CreateDomain("Generation App Domain");
        }

This works fine if I supply a new AppDomain but do not include the "hostspecific=true" parameter on the template directive.  It also works just fine if I supply the current Appdomain and include the "hostspecific=true" parameter.  It DOES NOT WORK if I supply a new AppDomain and also include the "hostspecific=true" parameter.  The issue is that the Engine class is not serializable.  Apparently, it must be serializable to move across the AppDomain boundary.

I have to specify the "hostspecific=true" parameter to make the functionality that I am trying to provide work.  In the short term, I can work around this by re-using the AppDomain, but I wonder how that will affect Visual Studio performance.  Am I right in thinking that the custom tool will run in a separate process space?  If it does, the AppDomains will only live for the duration of the code generation process; there would be no accumulation in memory.  But the author of the MSDN sample took some effort to mention that creating a searpate AppDomain was a good idea.  Is there a way to get a new AppDomain and "host specific" at the same time?

Jon Stonecash

Answer 1

Jon,

I think that changing your host class to inherit from MarshalByRefObject should resolve the serialization issue and allow you to access the host from a "hostspecific" template running in a new AppDomain.

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Oleg

Answer 2

Cue sound of hand slapping forehead!

That worked.  Thanks.

Jon Stonecash