Debugging problems with .NET Framework 2.0 installed

M

Michael Höhne

Hi,

I have developed some COM Addin and Smart Tag projects with VS 2003 and they
will be migrated to .NET 2.0/VS 2005 in the next 6 to 12 months. To test
possible issues with a side by side instalklation of :NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0,
I installed Visual Studio 2005 on my machine. Only some smaller problems
occurred, so I'm totally happy with the smooth migration progress. However
there's one thing that's driving me nuts: when trying to debug a COM Addin
or Smart Tag, I have to specify an Office executable in the debug settings,
let's say OUTLOOK.EXE. Running the project in debug mode will launch
Outlook, which loads my COM addin and decides to use the .NET Framework 2.0,
which definitily is a problem for VS2003 as it immediately returns after
Outlook was started. This seems to let the debugger assume that Outlook has
termnated, so it stops the debugging session which also terminates the
Outlook process. The next time I start Outlook, I get a message saying that
my COM addin caused a fatal error the last time it was started.

I'm able to work around this issue in creating the configuration file
OUTLOOK.EXE.config in the Office installation folder:

<configuration>
<startup>
<requiredRuntime version="v1.1.4322" safemode="true"/>
</startup>
</configuration>

However this will lead to total confusion when I have to maintain and test
both versions, one running on .NET 1.1 and the other on .NET 2.0. I tried to
use the same configuration settings for my assemblies, but it did not work.
I have no problems at runtime, neither with .NET 1.1 only nor with .NET 1.1
and 2.0 installed. It's only the debugging in VS 2003 that does not work as
expected.

Is there anything I can do to force Office to use the .NET 1.1 framwork
without using this approach? Ideally some settings in VS 2003 and VS 2005
that can change the behaviour when starting a debug session?

Thanks
Michael
 

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