Missing references after installing silveright5_2013_3_1016 in parallel.

[Sintayehu]

Hello,

We are currently on Silverlight5_2012_2_0725 and as we prepare to upgrade to the latest we installed RadControls_for_Silverlight5_2013_3_1016_Dev on our production build servers in parallel using the MSI.

First of here is how we are referencing Telerik controls (And we don't wan't to use hint path or reference Telerik from our solution - we'd rather reference it from its install path. makes Blend happy.)
<Reference Include="Telerik.Windows.Controls, Version=2012.2.725.1050, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5803cfa389c90ce7, processorArchitecture=MSIL" />


Now back to our experience / issue:

• Right after installing silverlight projects start complaining :

The type or namespace name 'Telerik' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

• Same issue on local machines that installed 2013_3_1016 in parallel. So on local machines we just reinstalled 2012_2_0725 with Visual studio extension enabled. And that fixed the reference issue locally.
• So we gave it a shot and re-installed on build server - difference being the build server does not have VS installed so naturally Telerik MSI did not offer to install VS extensions.

unfortunately this did not fix the issue.

How do we fix this?

**Having 2012_2_0725 working again is a must and a priority for our team.**

Second in order for us to upgrade we will need to run both versions in parallel with out a hint path. Just by changing the Version=2012.2.725.1050. This is how we do it with other control vendors. 

***Please note that we are not trying to use different versions of the control set in the same project. Just being able to build two separate application one old with 2012_2_0725 and another upgraded with a 2013_3_1016.

Thank You for your help!

[Petar]

Hello Sintayehu,

Thank you for contacting us!

I will give you some background in regard with the problem that you have encountered. The msi installer for RadControls for Silverlight registers the Silverlight assemblies under the following registry entry: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v5.0\AssemblyFoldersEx. This registration allows having references with fully qualified assembly name and without hint path. By design parallel versions of the RadControls for Silverlight will register the assemblies under the same key - RadControls for Silverlight. This means that if you have a project that uses the RadControls and references don't have hint path will use the last installed version (because every other installation overrides the value of the registry entry). I think that this is the reason for the problem on your side.

I would suggest you to either add hint path to you assembly references or try to add a second registry entry under the AssemblyFoldersEx key.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Petar
Telerik

[Sintayehu]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. 

The installers do not add a registry in the folder you specified. But I created one anyway for the 2012_2_0725 and tried to build; that didn't work.

I did a comparison between the MSbuild log files when it used to pass and now, what I see is that the searchpath parameter used to contain the location of Telerik's binaries. Now it doesn't.

By the way I did an exact same installs for another 3rd party old and new controls and the process was seamless. And the search path was added for both versions automatically.

Maybe this is the issue, how does Teleriks binary location get to MsBuild's search path? I have read about workarounds like maybe specifying \p:ReferencePath  = "Telerik binary location" but this is not scalable for us as we have multiple build servers with several projects.

Thanks for the help.

[Petar]

Hello Sintayehu,

Please excuse me for the partial information. What I meant was the HKLM registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v5.0\AssemblyFoldersEx (for 64-bit Windows) or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v5.0\AssemblyFoldersEx (for 32-bit Windows). Could you try with the above registries?

Regards,
Petar
Telerik

[Sintayehu]

Thank You Petar.

I was able to add 3 registries pointing to 3 different versions of telerik and my build server builds well.

Initially I wasn't adding the registry to the proper folder; I am doing this in the Wow6432Node folder and works; ... that was a good tip.

I still believe that this is something the MSI should be doing and I hope someone fixes that issue.

[Petar]

Hi Sintayehu,

I am glad that things are working fine now on your side.

The reason why the msi installers don't support this setup is that our experience has showed that more clients experience issues when working with Visual Studio. That is why we decided to keep only one version registered.

Should you experience any future issues don't hesitate to contact us again.

Regards,
Petar
Telerik