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Subject Author Date
Registering home screen plugin Daniel Seifert 09-18-2007
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Posted by Daniel Seifert on September 18, 2007, 10:14 am
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 Hi,

I'm in the process of creating a home screen plugin.

If I deploy it directly from within Visual Studio 2005 (register output
option is set), the plugin gets shown on the home screen (I changed the XML
file).

However, when I install the plugin (together with my application) via a CAB,
the plugin doesn't get registered - worse, the existing registration is
apparently removed (at least the plugin is not displayed anymore).

The cab file (relevant parts only) looks like this:

[DefaultInstall]
CopyFiles=Files.Common1
CESelfRegister=TestHomePlugin.dll

[SourceDisksNames]
1=,"Common1",,"Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK (ARMV4I)\Release\"
3=,"Common1",,"SetupDLL\Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC SDK
(ARMV4I)\Release\"
6=,"Common1",,"Plugins\SP-HomeScreen\Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone SDK
(ARMV4I)\Release\"

[SourceDisksFiles]
"app.exe"=1
"SetupDLL.dll"=3
TestHomePlugin.dll=6

[DestinationDirs]
Shortcuts=0,%CE4%
Files.System1=0,"%CE2%"

The created cab file looks okay, i.e. the DLL is included and the _setup.xml
file in the cab says

<characteristic type="TestHomePlugin.dll" translation="install">
<characteristic type="Extract">
<parm name="Source" value="T87R20~C.004" />
<parm name="SelfRegister" />
</characteristic>
</characteristic>

The TestHomePlugin.dll also gets installed (to \Program Files\MyApp\, same
as when deploying from within VS2005).

I'm a bit at a loss now, is there a way to check what exactly the issue is?
E.g. whether the registration is missing / failed / ... or whether
something else went wrong? Alternatively, is there something obviously
wrong with the above?

TIA

Daniel

Posted by Daniel Seifert on September 18, 2007, 2:19 pm
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 Hello,

Daniel Seifert wrote:
> However, when I install the plugin (together with my application) via a
> CAB, the plugin doesn't get registered - worse, the existing registration
> is apparently removed (at least the plugin is not displayed anymore).

I've narrowed this down some more and the problem actually is presenting
itself slightly different now. When I take a fresh device and install the
cab, everything works as expected (so the DLL registration actually
worked).

However, if I install the cab again (either exactly the same or one with an
updated plugin or app.exe), the home screen continues to show the previous
plugin and after a reset it is gone. This does not happen when deploying
directly from Visual Studio, which makes me believe that VS does some
additional steps when registering the software that the cab installer
doesn't.

My suspicion is that the plugin should get unregistered but that this isn't
done automatically by the CAB. What do you think? Or is there another
explanation for this behaviour and what would be the correct way to fix it?

Thanks in advance for any answer,

Daniel


Posted by Daniel Seifert on September 26, 2007, 4:09 pm
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Daniel Seifert wrote:
>> However, when I install the plugin (together with my application) via a
>> CAB, the plugin doesn't get registered - worse, the existing registration
>> is apparently removed (at least the plugin is not displayed anymore).
>
> I've narrowed this down some more and the problem actually is presenting
> itself slightly different now. When I take a fresh device and install the
> cab, everything works as expected (so the DLL registration actually
> worked).
>
> However, if I install the cab again (either exactly the same or one with
> an updated plugin or app.exe), the home screen continues to show the
> previous plugin and after a reset it is gone. This does not happen when
> deploying directly from Visual Studio, which makes me believe that VS does
> some additional steps when registering the software that the cab installer
> doesn't.

As an update to this, I switched from testing on the emulator to testing on
a real device and the problem seemed to have gone away. Will file this
under "emulator issues". Thanks for listening.

Daniel


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