Aaron Stebner's WebLog

Japanese version of XNA Game Studio 3.1 now available for download

astebner — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:03:47 GMT

Last night, the XNA Game Studio team released a Japanese version of XNA Game Studio 3.1 and the XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1. The Japanese news release announcing these products is located at http://www.xbox.com/ja-JP/press/release/20090709.htm.

Here are some links to help you get started if you want to use the Japanese version of XNA Game Studio 3.1:

One thing to keep in mind here – it is only supported to install one language of XNA Game Studio 3.1 on your computer at a time. If you already have the English version of XNA Game Studio 3.1 installed, setup will block you if you try to install the Japanese version afterwards (and vice versa). You will need to uninstall the English version of XNA Game Studio 3.1 and then install the Japanese version if you prefer to use the Japanese version.

Final version of WiX v3.0 now available for download

astebner — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:13:34 GMT

Over this past weekend, the 3.0.5419 build of WiX v3.0 was declared the final production build. If you are using any builds of WiX v3.0 for your projects, I strongly encourage you to update to the 3.0.5419 build at this time.

Here is some additional information about WiX v3.0 and the final 3.0.5419 build:

WiX 3.0.5419 build download locations - http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.0.5419.0/ or https://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/files/
WiX v3.0 online documentation - http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/main.htm
Rob Mensching’s announcement about the release of the final version of WiX v3.0 - http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2009/7/4/WiX-v3.0-released
Bob Arnson’s announcement - http://www.joyofsetup.com/2009/07/04/wix-v3-0-has-been-released/
WiX site on SourceForge – http://wix.sourceforge.net

Updated sample code that supports detection of .NET Framework 4

astebner — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:02:03 GMT

I have posted updated versions of the .NET Framework detection code that I have previously written about on my blog that now support detecting the install state of the .NET Framework 4 client and full products. In addition, I decided to create a new landing page that introduces the 2 versions of the sample code and provides usage information and download locations.

You can find the landing page at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/pages/9763379.aspx.

The downloads for the updated sample code are listed in this landing page. There will need to be some slight updates to this sample code when the final version of the .NET Framework 4 releases. I will keep this code up-to-date as needed in the future.

Link to new Object Placement on Avatars sample on the Creators Club site

astebner — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:30:39 GMT

Last week, we posted a few Avatar samples on the Creators Club site to help people get started using Avatars in XNA Game Studio 3.1 games. We’ve just released another useful Avatar sample that I wanted to make sure everyone saw:

Object Placement on Avatars Sample - http://creators.xna.com/samples/objectplacementonavatar; this sample demonstrates how to find the world space transform needed to draw an object (in this case a baseball bat) in an Avatar’s hand

As always, make sure to keep an eye out on the Creators Club site for additional sample content in the future as well.

Link to details about sound effect API changes in XNA Game Studio 3.1

astebner — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:22:42 GMT

One of my colleagues, Ashu Tatake, started a blog last week. This week he wrote a helpful post about updates in the XNA Framework sound effect APIs in XNA Game Studio 3.1, so I wanted to link to it here to help more people find it.

As Shawn Hargreaves described in this blog post, we made some changes in XNA Game Studio 3.1 to fix some issues we discovered with the sound effect APIs originally introduced in XNA Game Studio 3.0. Shawn’s post describes the scenarios, the problems we found with the 3.0 APIs, and an overview of the changes.

Ashu follows that up by providing more detailed information about how to migrate existing 3.0 code to 3.1. If you have any XNA Game Studio 3.0 projects that use sound effect APIs and are planning to upgrade the projects to 3.1, I encourage you to check out Ashu’s blog post for more details about how to identify which audio playback scenarios are most appropriate for your game and how to update your code to adjust for the breaking changes in the sound effect APIs in 3.1.

Steps to upgrade an XACT2 project to XACT3 so it can be used with XNA Game Studio 3.1

astebner — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:19:00 GMT

If you have an XNA Game Studio project that includes an XACT2 audio project and plan to upgrade it to XNA Game Studio 3.1, there is an additional manual step you must take to upgrade your XACT2 project to XACT3 format.

There is some information about this scenario in the XNA Game Studio 3.1 documentation. Unfortunately, the documentation topics don’t list the full error message that you will see if you compile your upgraded project without also upgrading the XACT project, so searching for the error message doesn’t lead to the exact documentation topics that are intended to help in this scenario. Hopefully this blog post will help guide folks who hit this error in the right direction.

Description of the issue

If you have an existing XNA Game Studio 3.0 project that uses an XACT2 audio project, then you upgrade to XNA Game Studio 3.1, you will see an error like the following in the Visual Studio error list when you attempt to compile it with XNA Game Studio 3.1:

The .xap file was created with a version of XACT that is incompatible with the XNA Framework Content Pipeline version used by this project. Refer to the documentation for options to resolve this mismatch.

Some guidance about this upgrade issue with XACT projects can be found in the following topics in the documentation:

Upgrading XNA Game Studio Projects - in the table of contents, this topic is located at XNA Game Studio 3.1 | Getting Started with XNA Game Studio | Upgrading XNA Game Studio Projects (or via this link if you have XNA Game Studio 3.1 installed).
Upgrade Guide: XNA Game Studio 3.0 to XNA Game Studio 3.1 – in the table of contents, this topic is located at XNA Game Studio 3.1 | Getting Started with XNA Game Studio | Upgrading XNA Game Studio Projects | Upgrade Guide: XNA Game Studio 3.0 to XNA Game Studio 3.1 (or via this link if you have XNA Game Studio 3.1 installed).

The following information in the above topics is applicable to help resolve this XACT compilation error message:

XNA Game Studio 3.1 projects must use the Microsoft Cross Platform Audio Creation Tool version 3 (XACT3), which is new to XNA Game Studio 3.1. The version of XACT provided with XNA Game Studio 3.0, XACT2, writes project files (.xap) that are incompatible with XNA Game Studio 3.1 projects. XNA Game Studio 3.0 projects must continue to use XACT2. Both versions of XACT are available in the Start menu, under All Programs | Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.1 | Tools.

How to update from XACT2 to XACT3 in XNA Game Studio 3.1

Here are some more specific steps you can use to upgrade an XACT2 project used in XNA Game Studio 3.0 to the version of XACT3 so they can be used by an XNA Game Studio 3.1 project:

On a system with XNA Game Studio 3.1 installed, click on the Start menu, choose All Programs, then Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.1 | Tools | Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool 3 (XACT3).
In the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) v3.0 tool, open the .xap file from the project that you upgraded from XNA Game Studio 3.0 to XNA Game Studio 3.1. When it loads, you should see the following message in the XACT UI:

---------------------------
XACT Version Mismatch
---------------------------
This project file was created with the August 2007 release of XACT. You are running the March 2009 release.
If you save this project, it will be saved as the current version and may no longer work with the version of XACT it was originally created with.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
Back up your .xap file before clicking OK if you would like to keep a copy of the old project (an upgrade does not happen automatically).
Click OK to upgrade the .xap project to 3.0 format.
Save the .xap project in the XACT UI and close the XACT UI.
Go back to Visual Studio 2008, open the project that you upgraded from XNA Game Studio 3.0 to 3.1 and choose to build it again.

Additional notes about this error message

The steps above explain how to upgrade an XACT2 project created with a previous version of XNA Game Studio to an XACT3 project that can be used with XNA Game Studio 3.1. However, there are a few different scenarios where the “.xap file was created with a version of XACT that is incompatible with the XNA Framework Content Pipeline version used by this project” error message can occur, so the above workaround may not successfully resolve this error in all cases.

Here are some of the possible configurations where this error will occur:

Attempting to compile an XNA Game Studio 3.1 project that includes an XACT2 project

This is the scenario that the workaround above applies to
Attempting to compile an XNA Game Studio 3.0 project that includes an XACT3 project

This is the inverse of the above scenario. You need to create a new version of your XACT project using the tool included with XNA Game Studio 3.1 at the following location on the start menu: All Programs | Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.1 | Tools | Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool 2 (XACT2).
Attempting to compile an XNA Game Studio 3.0 or 3.1 project that includes an XACT project created with a version of the XACT tool other than the ones that ship with XNA Game Studio 3.1 (for example, the version of XACT in the DirectX SDK)

This is similar to both of the above scenarios. If you’re using an XNA Game Studio 3.1 project, you need to make sure the XACT project is saved in the format of the version of XACT3 that ships with XNA Game Studio 3.1. If you’re using an XNA Game Studio 3.0 project, you need to make sure the XACT project is saved in the format of the version of XACT2 that ships with XNA Game Studio 3.0 and 3.1.

New XNA Game Studio 3.1 Avatar sample content is now available on the Creators Club site

astebner — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:57:06 GMT

As announced in this forum post, there is some new sample content available on the XNA Creators Club site to help you get started creating games in XNA Game Studio 3.1 that take advantage of the new Xbox LIVE Avatar development features. Here is a quick summary of the new content:

Avatar Animation Blending Sample - http://creators.xna.com/samples/avataranimationblending; this sample demonstrates how to blend between 2 Avatar animations over a period of time to avoid the appearance of snapping from one animation to the next
Avatar Multiple Animations Sample - http://creators.xna.com/samples/avatarmultipleanimations; this sample demonstrates how to play 2 of the built-in Avatar animations at the same time
Avatar usage guidelines - http://creators.xna.com/article/avataruse; this information will be a part of peer review once XNA Game Studio 3.1 games can be submitted for play testing and peer review in late July 2009

I also encourage you to check out the following links for more details about using Avatars in your XNA Game Studio 3.1 game:

Dean Johnson’s blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/dejohn/; Dean is the developer who implemented Avatar support in XNA Game Studio 3.1
Ziggyware tutorial - http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=270; this post is a great introduction to rendering Avatars in XNA Game Studio 3.1

Make sure to keep an eye out for additional content on the XNA Creators Club site in the near future as well.

Steps to install XNA Game Studio 3.1 without using the setup bootstrapper

astebner — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:02:23 GMT

In the past, we've heard from a few people via the Creators Club forums who have had trouble getting XNA Game Studio setup to run correctly. In a few cases, such as in this forum post, the setup program (named bootstrapper.exe) crashes shortly after double-clicking on the setup package to launch it.

If you run into this type of issue with XNA Game Studio 2.0, 3.0 or 3.1 setup, you can use the following set of steps to bypass bootstrapper.exe and install the pieces of XNA Game Studio manually.

To manually install XNA Game Studio 3.1

Uninstall XNA Game Studio 3.0 if you have it installed
Download xnags31_setup.exe and save it to your hard drive
Run xnags31_setup.exe /x to extract the contents to a folder of your choosing
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named redists.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\XLiveRedist.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx30_redist.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx31_redist.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_platform_tools.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_shared.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\platformer.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_documentation.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual C# 2008 Express Edition installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_vcsexpress.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or higher installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.1\Setup\xnags_devenv.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named arpentry.msi

To manually install XNA Game Studio 3.0

Download xnags30_setup.exe and save it to your hard drive
Run xnags30_setup.exe /x to extract the contents to a folder of your choosing
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named redists.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\XLiveRedist.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx30_redist.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnags_platform_tools.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnags_shared.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\platformer.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnags_documentation.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual C# 2008 Express Edition installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnags_vcsexpress.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or higher installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Setup\xnags_devenv.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named arpentry.msi

To manually install XNA Game Studio 2.0

Download xnags20_setup.exe and save it to your hard drive
Run xnags20_setup.exe /x to extract the contents to a folder of your choosing
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named redists.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\XLiveRedist.msi
Run the EXE at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Redist\DX Redist\DXSETUP.exe
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx20_redist.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named xnaliveproxy.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named xnags_shared.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named spacewar.msi
Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\xnags_documentation.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual C# 2005 Express Edition installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\xnags_vcsexpress.msi
(skip this step if you do not have Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition or higher installed) Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\xnags_devenv.msi
Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named arpentry.msi

If you end up running into this type of crash, before you proceed with one of the above workarounds, please collect a call stack with Visual Studio or Visual C# Express Edition and report a bug on the Connect site so that we can investigate it further.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is now available for download

astebner — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:20:00 GMT

As announced today in this news item on the Creators Club site, XNA Game Studio 3.1 is now available for download.

Getting started

Here are some links with information about how to download and get started using XNA Game Studio 3.1:

XNA Game Studio 3.1 download location - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=80782277-d584-42d2-8024-893fcd9d3e82
XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1 download location - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53867a2a-e249-4560-8011-98eb3e799ef2
Getting started page - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145512
Readme - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145515
Reporting bugs or feature suggestions - https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=226

What’s new in XNA Game Studio 3.1?

XNA Game Studio 3.1 includes the following new features:

Support for Xbox LIVE Avatars
Support for Xbox LIVE Party features
Video playback
Updated audio APIs for “fire-and-forget” scenarios
Support for XACT3
Automatic XNB serialization
XNA Framework multi-targeting in the Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition IDE
Upgrade wizard to convert 3.0 projects to 3.1
An updated version of XNA Game Studio Connect that allows so Creators Club members will be able to deploy and debug their games on an Xbox 360. If you previously deployed Xbox 360 games using XNA Game Studio 2.0 or 3.0 and the old version of XNA Game Studio Connect, you will need to manually delete and re-download XNA Game Studio Connect, as described in this blog post.
Downloadable content (only for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles that use the XNA Game Studio 3.1 XDK Extensions)

If you previously had XNA Game Studio 3.0 installed

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is a replacement for XNA Game Studio 3.0, and this means that you have to uninstall XNA Game Studio 3.0 before you can install XNA Game Studio 3.1.

Once you install XNA Game Studio 3.1, it can be used to create, build, deploy and debug both 3.0 and 3.1 projects. Existing 3.0 projects can be opened in XNA Game Studio 3.1 just like they could in XNA Game Studio 3.0, and you are not required to upgrade your 3.0 project to 3.1. You can also create new 3.0 or 3.1 projects in the New Project dialog in Visual Studio 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

If you choose to upgrade your 3.0 project to 3.1, you can do so by opening your 3.0 project in XNA Game Studio 3.1, right-clicking on the project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, and choosing the Upgrade Solution… menu item.

For more information about upgrading your 3.0 projects, check out this article on the Creators Club site.

If you encounter XNA Game Studio 3.1 setup failures

If you run into setup failures while installing XNA Game Studio 3.1, it can help to look at the log files created by XNA Game Studio 3.0 setup. They are located at %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.1 Setup\Logs.

The best way to get help for setup issues is to gather your log files, upload them to a file server of your choice, and then post a question on the Creators Club general forum that includes a link to your log files. When doing this, please be sure to search for related issues before posting something because your question may have already been answered.

You can also report setup issues via the Connect site - please include your log files as attachments when doing this.

<update date="6/12/2009"> Added a link to a new blog post by Shawn Hargreaves about audio improvements. </update>

Votive support for Visual Studio 2010 beta has been added to WiX v3.5

astebner — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:14:10 GMT

As Bob Arnson recently noted, the WiX virtual team has been working on getting initial builds of WiX v3.5 posted to the SourceForge site. The build from last week, 3.5.0605.0, includes a couple of big new features contributed by some folks on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft:

A version of Votive that integrates into the Visual Studio 2010 beta
A new set of detection properties for .NET Framework 4 beta installation states in the WixNetfxExtension
A new set of detection properties and registration custom actions for Visual Studio 2010 beta editions in the WixVsExtension

You can check out these new features starting in build 3.5.0605.0, which is available at http://wix.sourceforge.net/releases/3.5.0605.0/ on the WiX SourceForge site.

If you encounter any bugs with these new features, please report them on the WiX bug reporting site. If you have any questions about using these new features or about WiX in general, I encourage you to use the WiX mailing lists.

Links to download Japanese versions of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 beta 1

astebner — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:57:49 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I posted links to English download locations for the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 beta. There are now Japanese versions of some of these products available for download, so I wanted to post those download links as well.

.NET Framework 4 beta 1 Japanese downloads

Note: The download packages for the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and .NET Framework 4 client profile beta 1 are the same as for the English beta 1 release. The difference is that there are now Japanese download pages. The language pack installs on top of the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and adds Japanese string resources for runtime exceptions and other types of error messages.

Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 Japanese downloads

Here are a few useful links in case you run into issues while installing or using Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 and the .NET Framework 4 beta 1:

Connect site to report bugs and feature suggestions for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework - http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio/
.NET Framework 4 beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 beta forums - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/VSPreRelease,netdevelopmentprerelease,visualstudioprerelease,vstsprerelease
Setup log collection tool for .NET Framework 4 beta and VS 2010 beta - http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2009/05/22/updated-log-collection-utility-available-for-visual-studio-2010-and-net-4-0-beta-1.aspx

Possible problem publishing content with ClickOnce in XNA Game Studio 3.0

astebner — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 04:59:28 GMT

I ran into an issue in a Creators Club forum post this week that I wanted to describe in more detail here in case anyone runs into a similar issue in the future.

In the forum post, a developer was using the animated sprite sample available in this MSDN topic as the starting point for a project, then adding some items to the content project. Afterwards, they tried to use the Publish command to create a ClickOnce deployment package. Installing the ClickOnce package on another machine completed, but the game would not run because the content was not deployed along with the game binaries.

I looked at the project files included in this sample and found that the .csproj file for the Windows game is missing some metadata that is required by the ClickOnce publishing process in XNA Game Studio 3.0. The Windows game .csproj includes the following ItemGroup that references the nested content project:

<ItemGroup>
<NestedContentProject Include="Content\Content.contentproj">
<ContentRootPath>Content</ContentRootPath>
<Visible>False</Visible>
</NestedContentProject>
</ItemGroup>

XNA Game Studio 3.0 includes logic to automatically include the content in each nested content project in the ClickOnce publishing output. This logic requires each NestedContentProject element in the .csproj to include a Project child element. The Project element must be set to a GUID value that matches the value of the ProjectGuid element in the .contentproj file for the content project. In the animated sprite sample referenced above, this would look like the following:

<ItemGroup>
<NestedContentProject Include="Content\Content.contentproj">
    <Project>8ebb2a4c-cb7d-46a7-94a2-82f45c712d12</Project>
    <ContentRootPath>Content</ContentRootPath>
    <Visible>False</Visible>
</NestedContentProject>
</ItemGroup>

After adding the Project element listed in bold above to the Windows game .csproj file in the animated sprite sample, the Publish command will correctly include items that are in the game’s content project when creating a ClickOnce deployment package.

The built-in XNA Game Studio project templates include this Project element by default and set it to the correct GUID value when you instantiate a new project. Unfortunately, some of the older samples that we created in pre-3.0 versions of XNA Game Studio did not have that element, so it may be necessary to manually fix the .csproj by adding this information if you are discover that the files in your content project(s) are failing to deploy when using ClickOnce publishing.

One note here – it is possible to invoke the ClickOnce Publish command in XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 and XNA Game Studio 2.0 projects, but the command will not work correctly in those versions of XNA Game Studio. If you are running into issues with ClickOnce with older versions of XNA Game Studio, you should upgrade to at least XNA Game Studio 3.0 and try again first. If you still run into issues, check to make sure your project has the above metadata. If that isn’t the issue either, please contact me and/or post a question on the Creators Club Forums and we’ll be able to help you investigate further.

How to unblock installation of the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 on Windows XP Media Center and Tablet PC Editions

astebner — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:48:11 GMT

Question:

I tried to install the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 on my Windows XP Media Center system. It fails to install with an error like the following:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 cannot be installed because an incompatible version of .NET Framework (v1.0) is installed on the machine. For more information, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=91126.

I don’t see any useful information in that link, and I don’t see an option to uninstall the .NET Framework 1.0 in the Add/Remove Programs control panel on my system, so I’m stuck.

Is there any way I can install the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and VS 2010 beta 1 on my Windows XP Media Center system?

Answer:

Officially, the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 (and therefore VS 2010 beta 1) is not supported on Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. However, the wording in the readme is a bit vague. Item 2.1.1.1 in the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 readme says the following:

Note: You cannot install the .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 on operating systems that have the .NET Framework 1.0 built in.

As I previously wrote in this blog post, the .NET Framework 1.0 is installed as an OS component on Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, and it cannot be uninstalled on those versions of Windows XP.

If you are running Windows XP Media Center Edition or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and want to be able to install the .NET Framework 4 beta 1 and VS 2010 beta 1, you can manually rename the following registry value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\policy\v1.0]

If you do this, there are a few important caveats to keep in mind:

Renaming this registry key will cause the .NET Framework 1.0 to not function correctly in some cases. This is why I suggest renaming the key instead of deleting it. If you rename it, you can restore it in the future. You can rename it back immediately after installing the .NET Framework 4 beta 1, but this key will also prevent you from uninstalling the .NET Framework 4 beta 1, so if you do that, you will need to rename it again prior to uninstalling this beta.
Renaming this registry key was not officially tested by the Visual Studio and .NET Framework teams, so if you decide to do this, you do so at your own risk and you may run into unforeseen problems.
If you delete the above registry key and find that you need to restore it later in order to fix functional problems with the .NET Framework 1.0, you can use the steps in this blog post to repair the version of the .NET Framework 1.0 that is installed as an OS component on Windows XP Media Center Edition and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Alternatively, you can manually re-create the following registry key that is listed in this blog post:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Policy\v1.0]
3705 = 3321-3705

Using WiX 3.0 to create an MSI-based installer for Visual Studio project templates

astebner — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:26:14 GMT

A while back, I wrote a blog post where I introduced a set of Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 project templates that I created to supplement the ones that shipped in one of the earlier versions of the Windows Vista Media Center SDK. I used WiX v3.0 to create the installer for these project templates. The process of creating an MSI-based installer for Visual Studio project templates can be a bit tricky at first, so I wanted to walk through an example that demonstrates the steps to create an MSI to install and register Visual Studio project templates in order to hopefully make it easier for folks to create their own installers for Visual Studio project templates in the future.

I previously posted a set of instructions that describe how to use WiX v2.0 to create installers for Visual Studio project templates. This time, I am going to post snippets of the WXS file directly in this post and explain what each of the pieces of this installer is doing in more detail.

I chose to use WiX v3.0 in this example for a couple of key reasons that will make more sense when we walk through the WXS code below:

The WixVSExtension contains a set of built-in detection and properties and custom actions for locating versions of Visual Studio and registering new project templates for use in the IDE. This will save us a lot of work because we won’t have to author these properties and custom actions ourselves.
WiX v3.0 contains a new feature called smart cabbing (introduced by Rob Mensching in this blog post). This feature will optimize package sizes by not including duplicate copies of the same files in the cabs created during the build process. This is particularly useful for Visual Studio project templates because in many cases, the same project template zip file will be installed to different locations (such as the Visual Studio 2005 template location, the Visual C# 2005 Express template location, the Visual Studio 2008 template location, etc). Smart cabbing allows us to carry only one copy of each project template zip file, even if we install it for multiple versions or editions of Visual Studio.

I have posted a downloadable copy of the example that I’m going to use in this blog post at http://cid-27e6a35d1a492af7.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%7C_Tools/WiX%20Samples/wix%7C_sample%7C_vs%7C_project%7C_template%7C_installer.zip. It contains the following information:

WiX source files that describe how to build the MSI
Project template zip files (the payload of the MSI)
A build script that calls Candle and Light (the WiX compiler and linker) to create the MSI
A built copy of the sample MSI

For the rest of this post, I will be walking through the syntax of the file wix_sample_vs_project_template_installer.wxs that is included in the above zip file and that I also posted as a standalone file at http://cid-27e6a35d1a492af7.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%7C_Tools/WiX%20Samples/wix%7C_sample%7C_vs%7C_project%7C_template%7C_installer.wxs if you need to quickly reference it without downloading and extracting the entire zip file.

Import WiX Visual Studio 2005 detection properties and registration custom actions

WiX v3.0 includes a set of built-in detection properties and custom actions for the Visual Studio 2005 family of products. When building your project template installer, you will need to decide which (if any) Visual Studio 2005 products that you plan to support, and then import the appropriate properties and custom actions.

In the example I created, the following statements are used to import the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition and Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and higher detection properties and registration custom actions:

<PropertyRef Id="VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER" />
<PropertyRef Id="VS2005_IDE_VCSHARP_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED" />
<PropertyRef Id="VS2005_IDE_VB_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED" />

<CustomActionRef Id="VS2005Setup" />
<CustomActionRef Id="VCSHARP2005Setup" />
<CustomActionRef Id="VB2005Setup" />

Import WiX Visual Studio 2008 detection properties and registration custom actions

WiX v3.0 includes a set of built-in detection properties and custom actions for the Visual Studio 2008 family of products. When building your project template installer, you will need to decide which (if any) Visual Studio 2008 products that you plan to support, and then import the appropriate properties and custom actions.

In the example I created, the following statements are used to import the Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition and Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher detection properties and registration custom actions:

<PropertyRef Id="VS90_ROOT_FOLDER" />
<PropertyRef Id="VS90_IDE_VCSHARP_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED" />
<PropertyRef Id="VS90_IDE_VB_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED" />

<CustomActionRef Id="VS90Setup" />
<CustomActionRef Id="VCSHARP90Setup" />
<CustomActionRef Id="VB90Setup" />

Define the Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 templates directory structure

The next step is to define the installation folder structure for the templates. You need to define a default folder structure that matches the default installation directories for each of the versions of Visual Studio that you plan to support, and then also include logic to allow your project template installer to install the templates to the correct location if it detects that Visual Studio is installed to a non-default location.

In the example I created, the following folder structure is used for Visual Studio 2005 project templates. The Id named VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER matches one of the built-in WiX properties defined above, and it will be set to a non-default location during installation if the user has Visual Studio 2005 installed to a non-default location on their system:

<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
<Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder" Name="Program Files">
    <Directory Id="VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER" Name="Visual Studio 8">
      <Directory Id="Common7_2005" Name="Common7">
        <Directory Id="IDE_2005" Name="IDE">
          <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VS_2005" Name="ProjectTemplates">
            <Directory Id="CSharpProjectTemplates_VS_2005" Name="CSharp">
              <Directory Id="MceProjectTemplates_Csharp_VS_2005" Name="Windows Media Center"/>
            </Directory>
            <Directory Id="VBasicProjectTemplates_VS_2005" Name="VisualBasic">
              <Directory Id="MceProjectTemplates_VBasic_VS_2005" Name="Windows Media Center"/>
            </Directory>
          </Directory>
          <Directory Id="VcsExpress_2005" Name="VcsExpress">
            <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VCS_Express_2005" Name="ProjectTemplates"/>
          </Directory>
          <Directory Id="VbExpress_2005" Name="VbExpress">
            <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VB_Express_2005" Name="ProjectTemplates"/>
          </Directory>
        </Directory>
      </Directory>
    </Directory>
</Directory>
</Directory>

In the example I created, the following folder structure is used for Visual Studio 2008 project templates. The Id named VS90_ROOT_FOLDER matches one of the built-in WiX properties defined above, and it will be set to a non-default location during installation if the user has Visual Studio 2008 installed to a non-default location on their system:

<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
<Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder" Name="Program Files">
    <Directory Id="VS90_ROOT_FOLDER" Name="Visual Studio 9.0">
      <Directory Id="Common7_2008" Name="Common7">
        <Directory Id="IDE_2008" Name="IDE">
          <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VS_2008" Name="ProjectTemplates">
            <Directory Id="CSharpProjectTemplates_VS_2008" Name="CSharp">
              <Directory Id="MceProjectTemplates_Csharp_VS_2008" Name="Windows Media Center"/>
            </Directory>
            <Directory Id="VBasicProjectTemplates_VS_2008" Name="VisualBasic">
              <Directory Id="MceProjectTemplates_VBasic_VS_2008" Name="Windows Media Center"/>
            </Directory>
          </Directory>
          <Directory Id="VcsExpress_2008" Name="VcsExpress">
            <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VCS_Express_2008" Name="ProjectTemplates"/>
          </Directory>
          <Directory Id="VbExpress_2008" Name="VbExpress">
            <Directory Id="ProjectTemplates_VB_Express_2008" Name="ProjectTemplates"/>
          </Directory>
        </Directory>
      </Directory>
    </Directory>
</Directory>
</Directory>

Define components to install each of the Visual Studio project templates

Now that you have defined the installation folder structure, the next step is to define Windows Installer components for each of the project templates you want to install. There are a few considerations to keep in mind when doing this:

If you plan to support multiple versions or editions of Visual Studio, it is a good idea to put installation conditions on each component so the component will only be installed if the version/edition of Visual Studio that it applies to is present on the user’s system.
If you have any conditions in the component, you should set Transitive=”yes” for that component in your WiX authoring. The transitive attribute will cause Windows Installer to re-evaluate the condition during a repair. That is useful if the user installs your product, then adds a new Visual Studio edition and tries to repair your product. Setting the transitive attribute will allow your product to add your project templates to the newly installed Visual Studio edition during a repair of your product. If you don’t set the transitive attribute, the user would have to uninstall and then re-install your product to add your project templates to the newly installed Visual Studio edition.
It is possible for a user to install Visual Studio but not install all of the language tools. Therefore, if you have a C# project template, it is a best practice to not only check to see if Visual Studio is installed, but also to see if the C# project system is installed within Visual Studio. The same holds true for project templates for other languages (VB, VC++, etc).
If you plan to support both Visual Studio Standard Edition and higher and Visual Studio Express Editions, you should check for the existence of both the Visual Studio root directory (which can be created by either Visual Studio or Express Editions) and the Visual Studio executable for the exact edition of Visual Studio that the template will be used by. For example, in a Visual C# Express template, you would check for vcsexpress.exe, and in a Visual Studio Standard Edition or higher template, you would check for devenv.exe.

In the example I created, the following component is used to install a C# project template for use in Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and higher. Note that it implements the 4 suggestions listed above by including a condition that checks for the VS 2005 root folder, the file devenv.exe and the Visual C# project system and marking the component as transitive:

<DirectoryRef Id="MceProjectTemplates_Csharp_VS_2005">
<Component Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VS_2005" Guid="{75055686-A7E2-401F-B288-2EC6067E7F7B}" DiskId="1" Transitive="yes">
<Condition>(VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER AND VS2005DEVENV AND VS2005_IDE_VCSHARP_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED)</Condition>
<File Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VS_2005" Name="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental.zip" KeyPath="yes" Source="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip"/>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>

In the example I created, the following component is used to install the same project template as the one above, but to install it for use in Visual C# 2005 Express Edition instead of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and higher. Visual Studio Express Editions do not have selectable features, so there is no need to check that the Visual C# project system is installed in this component.

<DirectoryRef Id="ProjectTemplates_VCS_Express_2005">
<Component Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VCS_2005" Guid="{193E3610-90C5-442C-ACF7-D50C67B4B27C}" DiskId="1" Transitive="yes">
<Condition>(VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER AND VCSHARP2005EXPRESS_IDE)</Condition>
<File Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VCS_2005" Name="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental.zip" KeyPath="yes" Source="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip"/>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>

In the example I created, the following component is used to install the same project template as the one above, but to install it for use in Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher.

<DirectoryRef Id="MceProjectTemplates_Csharp_VS_2008">
<Component Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VS_2008" Guid="{70AE985D-706A-4C39-9417-20303DA605AC}" DiskId="1" Transitive="yes">
<Condition>(VS90_ROOT_FOLDER AND VS90DEVENV AND VS90_IDE_VCSHARP_PROJECTSYSTEM_INSTALLED)</Condition>
<File Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VS_2008" Name="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental.zip" KeyPath="yes" Source="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip"/>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>

In the example I created, the following component is used to install the same project template as the one above, but to install it for use in Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

<DirectoryRef Id="ProjectTemplates_VCS_Express_2008">
<Component Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VCS_2008" Guid="{92C85077-C8EB-40F9-82F3-1887B9EA111E}" DiskId="1" Transitive="yes">
<Condition>(VS90_ROOT_FOLDER AND VCSHARP90EXPRESS_IDE)</Condition>
<File Id="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip_VCS_2008" Name="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental.zip" KeyPath="yes" Source="MediaCenterApplicationFundamental_csharp.zip"/>
</Component>
</DirectoryRef>

All 4 of the above components use the same Source value in the File element, so the WiX v3.0 smart-cabbing feature will optimize the build process to include only one copy of the project template .zip file in your installer payload. This can save a lot of disk space when creating installers for Visual Studio project templates that target multiple versions/editions of Visual Studio.

Block installation if the necessary version of Visual Studio is not installed

In addition to including component conditions, I also suggest that you include blocking logic in your project template installer if none of the supported Visual Studio editions/versions are installed on the user’s system. If your project template installer only supports a single edition and version of Visual Studio, this type of block is simple to author. However, if you plan to support multiple editions and/or versions of Visual Studio, you need to carefully author the block so it won’t be overly aggressive.

In the example I created, the project templates support all of the following: Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition and higher, Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher, Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, and Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. The following logic will cause installation to block if none of these Visual Studio editions or versions are installed, but will allow install to proceed if at least one of them is installed (and in that case, it will rely on the component conditions described above to only integrate into Visual Studio versions/editions that are actually installed):

<CustomAction Id="CA_BlockIfVSIsNotInstalled" Error="!(loc.LaunchCondition_MissingVS)" />

<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="CA_BlockIfVSIsNotInstalled" Before="CostInitialize">(NOT VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER OR NOT VS2005DEVENV) AND NOT VCSHARP2005EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT VB2005EXPRESS_IDE AND (NOT VS90_ROOT_FOLDER OR NOT VS90DEVENV) AND NOT VCSHARP90EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT VB90EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT Installed</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>

<InstallUISequence>
<Custom Action="CA_BlockIfVSIsNotInstalled" Before="CostInitialize">(NOT VS2005_ROOT_FOLDER OR NOT VS2005DEVENV) AND NOT VCSHARP2005EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT VB2005EXPRESS_IDE AND (NOT VS90_ROOT_FOLDER OR NOT VS90DEVENV) AND NOT VCSHARP90EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT VB90EXPRESS_IDE AND NOT Installed</Custom>
</InstallUISequence>

The custom action is included in both the InstallExecuteSequence and the InstallUISequence so that the installation block will occur if the user runs the project template installer in UI mode or in silent mode.

Provide progress UI strings that will be displayed during installation

The Visual Studio custom actions that register new project templates can take a while to run, especially if the user has a lot of Visual Studio add-ins, packages and templates on their system. To help improve the installation experience, I recommend defining strings that will appear in the progress UI while the Visual Studio registration custom actions are running in your project template installer.

In the example I created, the following ProgressText entries will provide descriptive text for each of the Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 registration custom actions. Note that the Action names in these entries must match the names of the built-in WiX v3.0 custom actions that were imported earlier in this blog post or the progress text will not appear during installation.

<UI>
<ProgressText Action="VS2005Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VS2005_Description)</ProgressText>
<ProgressText Action="VCSHARP2005Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VCS2005_Description)</ProgressText>
<ProgressText Action="VB2005Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VB2005_Description)</ProgressText>
<ProgressText Action="VS90Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VS2008_Description)</ProgressText>
<ProgressText Action="VCSHARP90Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VCS2008_Description)</ProgressText>
<ProgressText Action="VB90Setup" Template="[1]">!(loc.Devenv_Setup_VB2008_Description)</ProgressText>
</UI>

Add upgrade logic for future versions of the installer

This step is something I tend to add to all installers I create and is not specific to Visual Studio project template installers. I typically use steps like the ones in this blog post to add logic to enable Windows Installer major upgrades. This gives you more flexibility in case you decide to release a new version of your installer in the future and want it to replace older versions.

Links to download Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 beta 1

astebner — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:41:15 GMT

As Soma announced on his blog earlier this week, Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 and the .NET Framework 4.0 beta 1 have shipped. You can check out this MSDN page and this post on Jason Zander’s blog for information about what is new in VS 2010. Also, here are links to the various versions of Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 and the .NET Framework 4.0 beta 1 that you can use to download and try out the beta:

.NET Framework 4.0 beta 1 downloads

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=147415
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Client Profile Beta 1 - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=147417

Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 downloads

Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1 (web download bootstrapper) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147408
Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 1 (ISO) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=150591
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 (web download bootstrapper) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147407
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Suite Beta 1 (ISO) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=150592
Visual Studio 2010 Remote Debugger (Beta 1) - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147421

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server beta 1 downloads

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Test Load Agent Beta 1 - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147420
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Team Foundation Server Beta 1 - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147412
Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management documentation - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147413
Visual Studio Team System 2010 Lab Agent Beta 1 - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147414

Visual Studio 2010 SDK beta 1 downloads

Visual Studio 2010 SDK Beta 1- http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147422
Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) Beta 1 Redistributable Package - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147419
Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Isolated) Beta 1 Redistributable Package - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147418

Here are a few useful links in case you run into issues while installing or using Visual Studio 2010 beta 1 and the .NET Framework 4.0 beta 1:

Connect site to report bugs and feature suggestions for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework - http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio/
.NET Framework setup forum - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/netfxsetup/threads
Visual Studio setup forum - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vssetup/threads