Hi there,

VS2019 Enterprise v16.6.0, installed LLBLGen Pro 5.7.0 RTM. The stand-alone version works, and it finds my license file.

The vsix extension is installed, but

• The .llblgenproj file type is not registered to Visual Studio, and "LLBLGen Pro designer integrated in Visual Studio" (as per troubleshooting section at the link below) does not appear in the "open with" list.
• The LLBLGen menu does not show up in Visual Studio, neither at the top level nor as submenu of "Extensions", yet in "Extensions" / "Customize Menu", LLBLGen Pro is listed and enabled, and typing 'llblgen' in the search box in the window title bar DOES find the entries it apparently would contain
• The LLBLGen toolbar can be enabled, it is visible when you do, but it doesn't do anything. Clicking a button just makes all buttons turn gray (disabled). After reading https://www.llblgen.com/Documentation/5.6/Designer/How%20To/VSNetIntegration.htm#how-the-visual-studio-extension-finds-the-llblgen-pro-installation-folder, I checked and found the registry key present with the correct path set, but only in de WOW6432Node subtree, not in the 64 bit tree. Adding a copy for 64 bit didn't help.

SysInternals Process Monitor shows that neither of those registry keys is accessed when Visual Studio starts, the only key pertaining to llblgen that is accessed is HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft.NETFramework\v4.0.30319\AssemblyFoldersEx\LLBLGen Pro Runtime Libraries v5.7. That too seems to contain the correct path.

I can't reproduce it, with VS 2019 Enterprise v.16.6.1 LLBLGen Pro v5.7 was installed after VS 2019.

From VS IDE main menu, File => Open File.... then browse to a folder where there is an .llblgenpro project file.

VS can open the file successfully loading LLBLGen Pro Designer within the IDE.

Are you using Open File or Open Project?

Walaa wrote:

From VS IDE main menu, File => Open File.... then browse to a folder where there is an .llblgenpro project file.

That works. I get the LLBLGen Pro welcome page, project explorer and catalog explorer, and the menu now appears under Extensions.

Walaa wrote:

Are you using Open File or Open Project?

I hadn't thought about trying Open File for a project file yet, I never tried that.

Opening it through Open Project, or adding it as an existing project to a solution, isn't possible: the project type dropdown contains a long list of project types that can be opened, but llblgen isn't in the list, and there is no "." entry.

I have just upgraded VS to 16.6.1. It didn't change anything, but I haven't tried reinstalling the vsix yet (I mean after the upgrade, I have tried that with 16.6.0).

lucvdv wrote:

I haven't tried reinstalling the vsix yet

I now have reinstalled it, a number of times even, with no positive effect. I did notice that while the vsix is being reinstalled, there's a warning that pops up for a fraction of a second, saying that an instance of Visual Studio is still running. It just moves on though, too fast to even fully read the message.

VS wasn't running however. To make sure of that, I did the last reinstall after logging off and back on to Windows, and closing some applications that launched automatically (Outlook and MS Teams background process) before reinstalling. It still briefly displayed the status message saying an instance of Visual Studio was running.

I did discover something else too: when I open the .llblgenproj file with "open with" and browse to the "Microsoft Visual Studio Version selector", it will recognize it and open it in VS2019, and it works. But in Visual Studio, 'Open project' and 'Add existing project' still won't let me open a .llblgenproj file.

I think part of my problem was me misunderstanding LLBLGen, and part LLBLgen presenting itself as a project file when it really is (in VS terms) a generic object, rather than a project.

I can add an LLBLGen project to an existing solution as an "existing item", but not as an "existing project". But when I add it as an "item" in a solution or solution folder, it will open the LLBLGen project when double-clicked.

All in all, I think I should look at it as really an external code generator, more like xsd.exe etc. than like other extensions.

It's indeed not a project type, as we have our own project system and seeing it as a project type would mean we had to use solution explorer as or project explorer and all other panes of vs as well. We initially tried this route, but it was so cumbersome to get this working (every little detail of the project explorer we have would have to be implemented in vs, an 'entity' would need to be an object associated with a file etc.), that we stopped and went the route that lead to what we have now which is thin wrapper around the standalone designer to make it work inside vs and with the solution (newly generated source projects are automatically added etc.) so we didn't have to do work twice.

If you open a .llblgenproj file in vs, the extension opens its toolwindows and tab for the designer tab. Integration into vs is very difficult, especially at a deep level, and we didn't want to go there as it would mean a lot of work for little gain.

Sorry for the confusion