What Happens When

I would like to start a new series of posts named What Happens When or WHW for now on.

Basically I will try to explain what happens behind the scenes when we do things inside VS and GAX. I think this is very helpful to understand the internal mechanics of VS and GAX and how things work.

So, the first post on this series is:

WHW we register a guidance package?

Answer:

1. The guidance package project is compiled.
2. The installer project is compiled and installed using installutil.
   1. An entry for the guidance package is added to the recipe framework manifest located at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Recipe Framework\RecipeFramework.xml.
      1. This entry contains a timestamp that is used by the runtime to check if a guidance package was altered before loading it.
   2. The following registry entries are created:
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\AutoLoadPackages\<PackageGUID>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Menus\<PackageName>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\NewProjectTemplates\PseudoFolders\<PackageGUID>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\NewProjectTemplates\TemplateDirs\<PackageGUID>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Languages\CodeExpansions\<LANGUAGE>\Paths\<PackageName>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Packages\<PackageGUID>
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Projects\<PackageGUID>
   3. A devenv / Setup is done to update menus and commandbars defined in the guidance package (this step requires some time to process).

Pablo

posted on Tuesday, January 09, 2007 7:08 AM by pga