Ticklish Techs

When I tried to add a Domain Property with a custom TypeConverter to my Domain Class I ran into serious problems. Sometimes it worked and this property was shown correctly in the properties window using the custom TypeConverter, but sometimes not. I was desperately searching for a bug in my code for hours but then I figured out: Each first build after a solution cleanup was working and all other builds not. Even when I start the working build a second time without rebuilding it, the custom TypeConverter was not used.

This looks very much like the number 1.10 (the second 1.10 😉 ) in the known issues list posted on the VSX Team blog:

1.10 TypeConverters and TypeDescriptors are not picked up during the build process or during toolbox initialization.
When adding a custom TypeConverter or TypeDescriptor and then building the DSL, the TypeConvertor or TypeDescriptor is not picked up. The workaround is to rebuild the solution with a clean build.

And as you see: I discovered this workaround for myself, too. But I also found another workaround. I’m not sure if it is working for all situations with the described known issue but if you have the same problem you might want to try it. If it works or not, please comment some feedback here.

I simply used another constructor of the TypeConverterAttribute. Instead of providing the type information I used the constructor with a string:

CopySourceAsHtml (CSAH) is a small and nice add-in for Visual Studio 2005 to copy the selected source code html-formatted to the clipboard. This is very useful if you want to paste this code into your blog (as I do here sometimes).

Unfortunately the current version 2.0.0 does not work with Visual Studio 2008 out of the box, but it is very simple to get it running.

The add-ins are located in below documents-folder in a path like this: C:\Users \Benjamin \Documents \Visual Studio 2005 \Addins. Just copy all files beginning with CopySourceAsHtml*.* to the corresponding folder for Visual Studio 2008: C:\Users \Benjamin \Documents\ Visual Studio 2008 \Addins.

Now you have to edit the CopySourceAsHtml.AddIn file with a text editor: only change at two positions in this short xml-file the Version value from 8.0 to 9.0.

After a restart of Visual Studio 2008 you should find the CopySourceAsHtml add-in in the Tools / Add-in menu and of cause in the context menu of the code editor.