Workign with different versions of Open Access / Enhace setup / Enable Project

[Jorge Arteiro]

Hi Guys,

WORKING WITH DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF OPEN ACCESS
I just migrated to OA Q3 from Q2(july 2009) and I had problems to keep my old small projects using the old version of Open Access.
All my projects references to Telerik UI and OA controls and libraries(Telerik.Web.UI.dll, Telerik.OpenAccess.dll, Telerik.OpenAccess.Query.dll, etc) are to a specific folder in my project(ExternalDependencies). I am trying keep my Applications version independent. It's works ok to Telerik UIcontrols, but OpenAccess is using the venhace.exe to enhace de assembly and the default Visual studio integration is loading this venhace.exe from the current OpenAccess folder installation.
How can I setup my projects to do that?

It's important, because I want to install the new version on my development environment, but I don't have time to compile all my projects with the new version to test again. Sometimes you have to deploy a new release using a old version. I know the the forward and reverse wizard, probably will be useless to old projects, but at least I can have a new release any time, if a have to make just changes on my interface for example. We can have brake changes on the future versions and I don't want to spend time($$$), making changes in old project that never will change enough to justify that.

OPEN ACCESS -> ENABLE PROJECT
The enable and update project is doing a great job updating all the references for us, but it's updating all my projects references as well. In my case, my references are not pointing to the OpenAccess folder and the Wizard is always changing my references back to the default. Could it be optional on the Enable project Wizard?(like a check box). The problem is that we are always clicking enable the project again to try fix something, and it's change all the references.
If the project is already enabled, should I just use the new option "Update Config References", to update the references versions?

Thanks in advance for any comment or suggestion about this.

Regards,
Jorge Arteiro

[Alexander]

Hello Jorge Arteiro,

The main problem here is that the version of the enhancer program should be the same as the version of the OpenAccess assemblies referenced by the application. If you want to keep using the old assemblies, you have to enhance the projects with the old version of the enhancer as well. So you should copy it somewhere before installing the new version. When you have the new version installed, you should not run the Enable project or the Check settings wizards in order to preserve the existing references.

The important step here is that you should not use the visual studio automation to enhance the projects containing persistent classes (because the automation uses the newly installed enhancer), you will have to do this manually from the command line. To do this, for each project that has the Enhancing property set to True, change it to False to disable the automatic call to the enhancer. After the solution is built with the changes you have made, open a command line and navigate to the directory where you previously copied the old venhance.exe. Then for each assembly that requires enhancing (initially had the Enhancing property set to True) execute the following command:

venhance.exe -assembly:"<PathToTheAssemblyFile>\AssemblyFileName"

More detailed information on how to use the enhancer could be found in this help topic.

This should be enough to have your old projects updated with the necessary changes. Please let us know if you face any problems with this approach.

Best wishes,
Alexander
the Telerik team

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[Nathan]

I have already uninstalled the prior version of the OpenAccess ORM, as well as my other developers.  Is there any way we can get the venhance.exe without jumping through a ton of hoops? (i.e. uninstalling the current version, installing the old version, copying the files, uninstalling the old version, reinstalling the new version)  This seems like a huge waste of time.

[Alexander]

Hello Nathan,

I understand your point but unfortunately we do not provide the enhancer as a separate download. The only way to get it is to install the whole product.

All the best,
Alexander
the Telerik team