gomasch Development Notes

It's oh so late. I'm discovering registration-free COM!

• "How To Build and Service Isolated Applications and Side-by-Side Assemblies for Windows XP"
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms997620.aspx

With Windows XP, the assembly is described by a manifest; the registry is no longer relied upon for storing and accessing the COM activation data.

• "Escape DLL Hell Simplify App Deployment with ClickOnce and Registration-Free COM"
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/RegFreeCOM/

So finally I can't escape those *** manifests.

Isolated=True in VS2005 already does a bit of the manifest generation work. But for C++ components with custom interfaces (IUnknown instead IDispatch) the manifests may need some patching.

1. Change dependencyType="install" to dependencyType="preRequisite". Otherwise VS 2005 Setup project still registers the COM dll even if it's set to vsdrfDoNotRegister.
2. We'd better also mention the proxy-stub-dll.  Described here:
   Problem: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=114083 
   https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/Workaround.aspx?FeedbackID=114083 
   Solution: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973913.aspx#rfacomwalk_topic8
   

keywords: "Unable to cast COM object" isolated registration free COM vsdrfDoNotRegister asmv2:dependencyType="preRequesite" asmv2:dependencyType="install" dependentAssembly comInterfaceProxyStub

Aftermath: (2007-12-14) It does work with .dlls, but cross apartment calls to a side-by-side OCX don't work for me (OCX built with VC++6). I really have all the comInterfaceExternalProxyStub entries in the manifest, but still I get a System.Reflection.TargetException if I call the OCX functions from .Net from a Non-UI thread. If I call the OCX functions via BeginInvoke all is fine. 
But since I made the experience that the cross apartment synchronization from COM works notably faster than using BeginInvoke.