How to upgrade from Q3 2009 SP1 to latest controls

[Jerry]

We recently purchased the Telerik Premium Collection for .Net and I need to upgrade a winforms app with the newest controls.  The old controls were just trail controls.  I don't want to make any mistakes and cause my app to stop working so I need advice on how to get the latest controls.  I did submit a ticket and i'm waiting but I need to start this right away so I figure I would post the question in the forum as well.    Should I just install the new controls or uninstall the old controls first?   I'm running out of time so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Jerry]

I was pushed into just installing the controls which i did.  The project loaded but when I went to open a form I get a "Object reference not set to an instance of an object error and it doesn't show me the form.  I can click "Ignore and continue" but I didn't know if I should do that yet. 

[Richard Slade]

Hi Jerry, 

There are major differences with the way that Q3 2009 and the current version work. You will need to start with uninstalling the old control suite and then installing the new one. At this point your project will no longer compile and you will need to add back in the correct references. A lot of the assemblies have changed since this version and it depends what controls you are using in your project but it will involve going through each form and manually upgrading any broken changes. Depending on what controls you are using, you may also find that you need to replace some of them, as several of the older controls are no longer part of the suite and have been replaced with better performing replacements. 

You can view the Release History here which may help you somewhat, but it's my guess that the usual project upgrade wizard will not be out-performed by you doing it all manually. 

Hope that helps, but if you have further questions, please let me know
Richard

[Jerry]

Thank you Richard,

Since I went ahead and installed RadControls_WinForms_2012_1_321_dev.msi already should I still go back and uninstall all the old winforms that are installed on my machine?   The majority of the project were radGrids and panels to hide and show them. 
As soon as I opened it I did get an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".  What do you recommend I do? 

On one of the forms I'm getting
Warning    1    Could not find type 'Telerik.WinControls.UI.RadListBox'.  Please make sure that the assembly that contains this type is referenced.  If this type is a part of your development project, make sure that the project has been successfully built.        0    0    



Thank you

[Richard Slade]

Hi Jerry, 

The RadListBox was dropped in Q2 2010 and has been replaced with the much more efficient RadListControl so you would need to change the instance over to be of that new type. 

As for other errors, it will be a case of going through manually and changing over any controls that no longer exist and ensuring that you have the new references added. 

It is not a requirement for remove the old installation, but personally I would do it as you now have no need for it and I would want to make sure there are no old GAC references remaining

Hope that helps
Richard

[Jerry]

Richard,

Can I leave the old controls installed till I get the application working with the new ones?  I made a back up of my application when I did the upgrade with the telerik wizard.  Will that back up work if I still have the old versions of the winforms installed?

I recieved so many errors and properties that do not exist that i'm not sure if it would be better to create the app from scratch.  If I have the old components at least I can view the forms with the old controls.

These are the controls i'm using from the old version.  Can you help me by telling me what they are called now?
radForm
radButton
radComboBox
radGridView
radLabel
radLabelElement
radListBox
radPanel
radRadioButton
radStatusStrip
RadComboBoxItem


The references in my app all point to the GAC.  I removed them but now i'm pointing to the DLLs in the installation directory is that the right way to do it?

I didn't expect this much to be different and the whole application to break.    I won't let it go that long again before I do an upgrade.

Thank you again for all your help

[Richard Slade]

Hello Jerry,

I'll do my best to answer each of your questions:

Can I leave the old controls installed till I get the application working with the new ones? I made a back up of my application when I did the upgrade with the telerik wizard. Will that back up work if I still have the old versions of the winforms installed?
Yes. If you have the old suite of controls installed, then you should be able use the old application against it again if you restore that back up

radForm = RadForm. RadForm documentation
radButton = RadButton. RadButton documentation
radComboBox = RadDropDownList. Upgrading to RadDropDownList documentation
radGridView = RadGridView. RadGridView documentation
radLabel = RadLabel. RadLabel documentation
radLabelElement = RadLabelElement
radListBox = RadListView. RadListView documentation
radPanel = RadPanel. RadPanel documentation
radRadioButton = RadRadioButton. RadRadioButton documentation
radStatusStrip = RadStatusStrip. RadStatusStrip documentation
RadComboBoxItem = RadListDataItem.

Note that whilst some of these controls are still the same name (such as the RadGridView) there are major differences in that the newer RadGridView now uses UI Virtualization. You can read more about the structure here

The references in my app all point to the GAC. I removed them but now i'm pointing to the DLLs in the installation directory is that the right way to do it?
There are reasons why you might want to point towards the GAC and the installation directory.

Hope this helps
Richard

[Jerry]

Richard,

Thank you so much for your help.  This has turned into a major mess. 

How can I get my references to point to the ones in the GAC? 

Thank you

[Richard Slade]

Hi Jerry, 

The best place to start (as I'm not aware of all your requirements and plans for your project) is to have a look at the docs on installation and distribution which should tell you everything you need in this regard. This area can be found here

Regards,
Richard

[Stefan]

Hello guys,

Thank you both for writing.

My advice for this case will be to perform the upgrade in two steps. First, remove all installations from your Pc and install just the Q3 2010. Upgrade your project to Q3 2010 where all obsolete controls exists and their descendants exist too. For most of the obsolete controls, we offer a Conversion Tool, which will help you with the conversion. This tool can be used for the following conversions:

- RadTabStrip to RadPageView
- RadPanelBar to RadPageView
- RadComboBox to RadDropDownList
- RadListBox to RadListControl

Additionally, If you have used the old implementation of our docking control (DockingManger), you will be able to convert it to the new implementation (RadDock), again from an option in the old control Smart Tag.

The only obsolete control which you will manually convert is the RadToolStrip control. The reason for not providing a tool for conversion of this control is the fact that both controls are semantically different, so you will have to manually recreate the control by using RadCommandBar. From my experience, I can say that this is an easy conversion.

After you convert all your controls to their descendants and clean all errors and warnings, then you can remoev Q3 2010 and perform an upgrade to the latest version.

I hope that you find this information helpful. If you have any questions, during the transition process, do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,
Stefan
the Telerik team

[Jerry]

Richard,

Our project is a windows form project that allows users to change data in a database.  I publish the setup to a network drive and they run the install from there.  Within the published application files are deploy files.  ex. Telerik.WinControls.dll.deploy
Now if I just point to the new dlls in my program files directory and set 'Copy Local' to true will that allow the application to be distributed correctly?

That page didn't say how the references to assemblies in the GAC are added to a project?  When I installed the new controls were they automatically installed in the GAC?

Sorry for all the questions there is just so much going on with this project and I have to figure it out and it's just a major mess right now.

Thank you for your quick replies.

[Richard Slade]

Hello Jerry, 

Perhaps there was some overlap. Stefan's suggestions will help you for sure and the conversion tools should assist you in getting this all converted. 
If you need further help, please let us know. 
Thanks
Richard

[Jerry]

Stefan,

Thank you so much I will do what you suggest. 

I have to edit my previous post to tell you that I was told by my lead to start the entire project from scratch using the new controls and look at the old app to try and make it a smooth transition. 

Is it ok for me to make a new support ticket for every issue I find? 

Thank you

[Stefan]

Yes Jerry, it is OK to open a new ticket for issues that you have.

Kind regards,
Stefan
the Telerik team