LS VS2013 preview - existing extensions no-go

Question

Having installed the above preview including LS v4 must say I am excited about the separated .lsml screen files and certainly the ability to have more than one designer open - at last!

Was crestfallen to discover however that not ONE of my previously installed extensions have migrated over! As a test I opened up VS2012 and uninstalled my installation of a very popular control extension, closed down VS2012 then ran the extension .vsix directly. It only recognised VS2012 as being able to install to so I suspect the same is true for all others.

Also browsing the online extensions when in VS2013 preview there are very few extensions available and NONE at all for LightSwitch! Who develops for LS using NO extensions?

Obviously means I can't migrate current projects over to take advantage of these goodies and was really looking forward to that!

Unless there's something I'm missing?

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Ian Mac

Answer 1

Well it is a preview. That said, this is "VisualStudioVersion = 12.0.20617.1 PREVIEW" and LightSwitch extensions will like only target to v11 in their package manifests.

I will re-build a couple of our extensions later today to see if I can get them to appear in VS2013. I am hopeful that this is all that is necessary.

Cheers

Dave

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Dave Baker | Xpert360 blog | twitter : @xpert360 | Xpert360 website Opinions are my own. For better forums, please mark as helpful/answer, if it helps/solves your problem.

Answer 2

Hi Dave,

I'm sure you are right regarding most extensions. MS have marketed this 'preview' as go-live, after all!

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Ian Mac

Answer 3

The thing is, which extension provider is going to guarantee that their extension works in the next drop of Visual Studio that you know nothing about? That is what you do when setting the supported version number ahead of time.

Now the preview is out it will likely take a few months for all extension providers to catch up.

Cheers

Dave

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Dave Baker | Xpert360 blog | twitter : @xpert360 | Xpert360 website Opinions are my own. For better forums, please mark as helpful/answer, if it helps/solves your problem.

Answer 4

I can now confirm that setting the target version range to "[11.0, 12.0)" allows an extension to be installed in VS2012 and VS2013 Preview.

Cheers

Dave

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Dave Baker | Xpert360 blog | twitter : @xpert360 | Xpert360 website Opinions are my own. For better forums, please mark as helpful/answer, if it helps/solves your problem.

Answer 5

Hi

The screen-shot below shows how I changed the manifest to successfully install an extension in VS 2013 Preview.

Hope this is helpful.

Cheers, Mark.

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Mark

Answer 6

Hacking the manifest of other people's extensions will likely violate usage terms and some may not function correctly, some may crash Visual Studio.

If you do resort to this do not redistribute the hacked packages.

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Dave Baker | Xpert360 blog | twitter : @xpert360 | Xpert360 website Opinions are my own. For better forums, please mark as helpful/answer, if it helps/solves your problem.

Answer 7

I am agree with Dave.

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Rashmi Ranjan Panigrahi
www.lightswitchspecial.com

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Answer 8

I had a similar problem, but with my data source providers. I like the manifest modification approach; however, I went the registry route instead as it was more easily repeatable across my development machines and saved me from having to do any reinstallations. I located the registry keys under the Visual Studio (11) install which corresponded to my data providers / your extensions. I checked both HLKM and HKCU. Most of my installs are 64 bit so I checked there too. Then I right-clicked and exported those keys. Then I just did a search & replace to change the references from the version 11 to the version 12. This essentially involved just to search & replace executions for each .reg file exported. "\11" -> "\12" and "Version =11" -> "Version=12". I'm sure there are more efficient approaches to doing this but this route only took a few mins. then I imported the modified .reg files and voila! Life in VS2013 Preview lit up with all my "extras". Correspondingly, I only had to right-click and import on the other machines since the .reg files are 100% reusable. :-D

HTH...

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Thanks, -Eric

Answer 9

Hi Eric,

I wonder would you be able to give a more detailed description? I am not well versed in registry hacking and am looking to see if I can get my DevExpress XtraReports extension working in VS2013 using the method you describe?

Many Thanks

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Ian Mac