SoftPro SDK Requires Visual Studio 2008

[joe.mag]

I am building a clean development computer since my old one is sorely underpowered. I installed Visual Studio 2010 which is what I use for all development on my current dev machine. I then went to install the latest version of the SoftPro SDK (2.6.40705.321 sp 12.1) and it kindly pops up the message "You must have Visual Studio 2008 installed before installing this SDK." How very quaint. Only problem is a) I don't want to install VS 2008 on my nice clean dev machine b) I don't even think I still have access to VS 2008 installation media since I let my MSDN subscription lapse and c) spying on the setup script with SysInternal's procmon didn't clearly reveal what registry keys or files the setup script is using to detect the presence of VS 2008.

I guess I don't understand why SoftPro is taking such a paternalist view with their setup script--if I want to run the SDK on a machine that lacks VS 2008 in preference to the more up to date (yet still 3 year old) VS 2010 then why stop me? This is tantamount to saying I can't install a Word addon unless I have Office 2007 installed when it's April 2013 last time I looked at the calendar!

I need one of the following:

1) A new setup script for the SDK that doesn't place such a silly prerequisite on the target environment
2) A list of the registry keys, files, etc. the setup script looks for to detect the presence of VS 2008
3) A list of all of the magic the setup scripts that I can do manually so I can get my custom package project to build

Thanks!

[Randy Mellow]

Hi Joe,

The SDK setup looks for "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0" to get the "InstallDir" value. Providing this (pointing to you 2010 location) would probably be enough to get past the SDK setup. It looks like the only thing the SDK needs this for is installing the Select project templates.

I'll have to check on the possibility of updating the setup script.

[joe.mag]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed reply!

I did as suggested, creating a registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0 for InstallDir. Since installing VS2010 apparently creates a folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE [yes, I'm on a 64 bit machine] I initially set that as the value for the registry entry. When Setup for the SDK still complained that VS 2008 was absent I then corrected the path to point to the 2010 location but to no avail. I ended up exporting the 9.0 sub-tree from the registry of my old dev machine and importing it to my new one and that still didn't resolved the "vs 2008 required" check in the SDK setup.

So I'm still stuck w/o the ability to run the setup. What I'm finding as far as trying to work around running setup at all is that none of my SoftPro.xxx.yyy.zzz references are able to be found in my project. Even after I reimport the references from the install path of Select I still get "could not be found" errors.
1) I've set the Reference Path to include c:\program files (x86)\SoftPro\Select
2) I've confirmed that I have appropriate permissions to that path
3) I've added the reference to SoftPro.Business.Objects.Core manually by browsing to that file

But my project returns "The referenced component 'SoftPro.Business.Objects.Core' could not be found, the icon for the reference in the solution explorer tree shows a yellow exclamation warning, and the path property for the dll is empty.

This may be something unrelated to the inability to run the sdk setup but it's certainly got me dead in my tracks.

[Randy Mellow]

I believe your references problem is related to your inability to complete the SDK setup process. The only other thing I can think of is that the registry key might need to be in the Wow6432Node branch (under SOFTWARE) since you're on a 64 bit machine.

[joe.mag]

Randy,

bingo! I took the .reg I had exported from my 32 bit development system and replaced all the paths of the form "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0" with "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0" and merged it into the registry and the setup script ran to completion. I'll have to see if that fixed the reference issue later--have some higher priority stuff to do at the moment.

Thanks for your help!

[joe.mag]

Oops, not only did I speak too soon but I blazed through an error window in the setup without realizing it. If I may say, this window (see attachment) is rather innocent looking for an error window!

So I'm still SDKless.

This is in my application logs:

Windows Installer installed the product. Product Name: SoftPro Select SDK. Product Version: 2.6.40705.321. Product Language: 1033. Manufacturer: SoftPro Corporation. Installation success or error status: 1603.