topic Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development in SAS Enterprise Guide

Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

JayDZimmerman — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 21:54:40 GMT

Using Chris Hemedinger's amazing book and downloadable examples/templates, we have begun developing custom tasks for EG (7.1). We are about to go full bore into this, and were wondering if anyone had experience developing with a version of Visual Studio beyond 2013. We would like to use Visual Studio 2017 since it is our current standard, but didn't know if we would encounter issues with the .NET Framework version, debugging interface, or using Chris' templates. Anyone have ideas on this?

Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

AndrewHowell — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 00:16:51 GMT

Paging @ChrisHemedinger ..??

Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

ChrisBrooks — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:56:35 GMT

I don't think you should encounter problems with the .NET Framework since you can specify which one to use inside Visual Studio (as long as you have the version you want to use installed). I would also have thought you would be OK with the templates but as Andrew saya Chris Hemedinger is the authority on this.

Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

CaseySmith — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 13:59:43 GMT

@ChrisBrooks is correct. Using Visual Studio 2017 to create your custom tasks is completely fine *as long as* you target a version of the .NET Framework that is compatible with the version of EG or AMO you intend to run the tasks in.

The following table shows the .NET Framework version that was targeted by each EG (and AMO) version:

SAS Enterprise Guide	.NET Framework
7.1, 7.11, 7.12, 7.13	4.5.1
6.1	4.0
5.1	4.0
4.3	3.5

For a custom task to be compatible with a specific EG/AMO version, it must target the same or earlier .NET Framework version. For example, if your custom task targeted .NET Framework 3.5, it should work in EG 4.3 and later.

This also means you can't accept the default .NET Framework version used in Visual Studio 2017, since it is 4.7, which is newer than the current latest version targeted by EG/AMO; you'll have to change it to target an older .NET Framework version, depending on which versions of EG/AMO you wish to support.

Casey

Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

JayDZimmerman — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:53:28 GMT

Thank you all for the great input. It sounds like we should be able to move forward with VS 2017 as long as we set the correct framework target (that chart is really helpful). I'll try copying the template files to the 2017 directory and hope that Microsoft hasn't changed the format since 2013; it wouldn't be the first time they've done that to me.

Re: Visual Studio version for EG add-in development

AndrewHowell — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 02:19:39 GMT

@JayDZimmerman - don't forget to vote for your preferred accepted solution (if applicable).