Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (isolated) - Enu
Emelina Gilpin
I have an annoying problem using TestStand 2012. Each time I launch TestStand a Visual Studio 2010 Shell dialog appears "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.". I don't have Visual Studio installed and I never had. I certainly never needed to enter any license. The same dialog appear when launching TestStand Version Selector.
I'm running Windows 7 Profession 64-bit SP1. The only Microsoft products that is installed are SQL Server 2012 Express and .NET Framework 4 Runtime. I've tried to reinstall both TestStand and .NET framework still same dialog appearing. If I just press "Close" on the dialog everything works just fine, but really annoying needing to do that.
I have now discovered what is causing the problem. It is the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express installation that is causing the problem. If you include install the SQL Server Management Studio when installing the SQL Server Express, you will also get the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (isolated) installed as well. If I uninstall the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell, TestStand works again, but SQL Server Management Studio fails to launch. Reinstalling Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (isolated) puts SQL Server Management Studio back in business again, but TestStand gets the "Invalid license" dialog again.
Yes, I have tried reinstalling, but I actually installed SQL Server Express last. I have seen the same on other machines as well. I am quite sure it is a problem with TestStand. It is completely repeatable. Uninstall the power Shell, TestStand works, but not SQL Management Tools and vice verse.
There are many problems with the "Invalid license" if you google it, but almost 100% is about updating Visual Studio, but I am not using Visual Studio, only SQL Server Management Tools that requires the Visual Studio Power Shell for some reason.
Well, the version switcher does try to install visual studio integration (and also runs when you launch teststand), so it is likely that installation that is failing. I will enter a corrective action request into our database and see if there is any way to workaround this.
with an executable that does nothing but return 0 as an exitcode. If ToolboxInstaller is what is causing the error message, then this should disable it. If you ever install the full version of Visual Studio 2010 you should undo this though and put the real toolboxinstaller.exe back.
I have recorded this issue in our tracking database. It will likely be addressed in a future version. You might want to try installing Visual Studio 2010 Express (I think it's a free download from Microsoft), or the other workaround I have proposed.
I am trying to reproduce your problem without any luck. Starting with a clean machine, I have installed SQL Server Express 2012 with Management Tools and TestStand (in both orders) and have not seen the error that you mentioned. I was able to launch both TestStand and the Visual Studio Shell on its own without any difficulties.
I'm running english Windows 7 SP1 64-bit, and no I haven't tried reinstall SQL Express, but removing Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell makes TestStand 2012 works, but makes SQL Server Management tools not working. If I reinstall Visual Studio 2010 Shell, the SQL Server Management Studio works again, but dialog back in TestStand. Could you just try to install the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell 10.0.40219 and see if your TestStand installation works?
Fact is, you don't need Visual Studio 2010. You need the, like yun_07 said, "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated)". There is a big difference. The shell is, the name says it to some extent, an "empty visual studio". It's something created by Microsoft to allow other developers, like the people working at SAP, to develop their own IDE, but with a lot of the groundwork already done. I haven't developed for the Shell myself, but I hear it saves a lot of time being able to skip the basics.
Why VS Shell? They could've also picked Eclipse or VS.Code, but I guess that's a question for the original dev team that started with the PDI. I see the shell can also be used royalty-free, which is a great kind of free and perhaps they were more familiar with Visual Studio at the time.
The cloud application studio is build on the MS .net framework and hence it is require to have visual studio installed as a prerequisites to use/build the extension capabilities of the Business ByDesign or Cloud for Customer.
The prerequisite for this article is a running application that was created in part one or second of this series. The source code for the prior application having a vsix extension could be downloaded along with this article or from Github.
Integrated mode enables your users to use standard Visual Studio features along with your custom tools. The integrated shell is intended primarily for hosting programming languages and software development tools.
Custom tools that are built on the integrated shell automatically merge with any other edition of Visual Studio that is installed on the same computer. You can provide a redistributable version of the Visual Studio integrated shell if Visual Studio is not already installed.
Like I described at the start of the article that using Visual Studio Isolated Shell, you can create/customize Visual Studio like product. There is a lot of theory around this which could be read over the internet on MSDN. This article will focus on creating a simple Visual Studio Isolated Shell application and integrating the pre-developed extension into it as the complete theory part is beyond the scope of this article.
This is the main project responsible for customized appearance of isolated shell application, all the customizations and actions could be controlled from this projects. This project contains the folder named ShellCustomization which allows on how the application would look like, what should be the start / launch screen and what features we can enable or disable from the existing visual studio features. One can do this by customizing pkgdef or pkgundef file. Read more about customization..
As mentioned earlier, one can also customize the AboutBox package responsible to show information in Help\About when the application launches. In the ShellApplication.AboutBoxPackage, open the source.extension.vsixmanifest file. Since this project is VSIX project type, one can see the VSCT extension and the command files in the project like earlier used in the find in explorer project created in first part of this series. In the vsixmanifest file, specify the Author, version of the product, product name, description and language of the product in Metadata section. All this information will be shown when user clicks on Help\About button in Isolated Shell application.
Right click vsixmanifest file and in the context menu, click on Auto-sync Resx and Icon file, to sync the resx file with the manifest file as shown in the following image. This step is also described in detail in first part of the series.
Now, since we have synced the .resx and icon files, the redundant VSPackage.resx file makes no sense and can be deleted from the application as shown in following image. We can see that the manifest file now has its own .resx file and .cs file underneath the source.extension.vsixmanifest file.
We are good to launch our basic Isolated shell application and see what we get. Compile the solution and press F5 to run the application. When the application starts, the custom image we used as Splash screen will be shown as shown below.
After which the application launches. We see another visual studio kind of application with a custom small icon at the top and AppName that was specified in manifest file in ShellApplication pkgdef file.
One will get to see the Open in File Explorer extension shown on the context menu of the file as it used to display in the experimental instance in the first part. This proves that the extension is successfully embedded in Visual Studio Isolated Shell application. Now, one can test the extension by actually clicking on the command, and it will open the file location with the file selected.
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