Migrating addins from EG 4.1 to EG 7.1

[AMK]

Hi,

we are migrating to SAS 9.4/Enterprise Guide 7.1 from SAS 9.1/EG 4.1 and we have a good few addins that need to migrate. EG7 picked up on the addins from EG4, but unfortunately none of them run when I try to use them.

The addins were all developed in .Net 1.1, and I have tried compiling them in .Net 4, and inserting them with the add-in manager, but it didn't seem to work.

I have included an example below of an application error that I get, but the summary message is:

Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseGuide\7.1\SAS.Shared.AddIns.Bridge.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

I did check the support site, but I could not find documentation on migrating addins. However there is so much documentation it can be difficult to find anything.

Is there an easy way to migrate them, or failing that, is there a guide somewhere to migrating them?

Thanks,

Adrian.

 
Problem report created: 11 July 2017 12:03:19 UTC
Application Error
SAS Enterprise Guide has encountered a problem
We recommend that you save your work and restart SAS Enterprise Guide.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exception information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseGuide\7.1\SAS.Shared.AddIns.Bridge.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

-------------------------- Technical Information Follows --------------------------
Exception Details:
----------------------------------------
Exception type:  System.IO.FileNotFoundException
Message:         Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseGuide\7.1\SAS.Shared.AddIns.Bridge.dll' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Source:          mscorlib
Target Site:     _nLoad
Stack Trace:
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoadAssemblyName(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly reqAssembly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)

[ChrisHemedinger]

In general, SAS EG 4.1 tasks can work in v7.1 without modification or rebuild, even though they are designed with .NET 1.1.  Things can fail if your task strays from some of the published APIs or relies on other assemblies that aren't part of later versions of EG.

To learn whether this is the case for your tasks, I'd need to see one of them.  If you like, you can zip up one of the DLLs and e-mail to me (chris.hemedinger@sas.com) -- or open a TS track with this and tell the consultant I sent you, and supply the DLL in the track. 

Rather than using the Add-In Manager, I recommend "installing" the tasks by using the drop-in deployment method.  Put the task DLLs in %appdata%\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\7.1\Custom, or in PROGRAMFILES\SASHome\x86\SASEntepriseGuide\7.1\Custom (where EG is installed) -- either way, you'll have to create the Custom folder in those spaces.  When EG starts it will detect and load the tasks.  

If that doesn't work, turn on the Application Logging (Tools->Options) and restart EG.  Then exit EG and send the generated application log along in your track or e-mail.  The log will contain some diagnostic information that will help us determine why it wasn't loaded properly.

[AMK · Accepted solution]

Thanks for helping me with this Chris.

The link you sent was very useful, so I am adding it here:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/guide/customtasks/

Also the video you sent on:

http://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2015/06/11/creating-custom-tasks-for-sas-enterprise-guide-expe...

And the information about the SAS.Tasks.Toolkit dll takes a good bit of the hard work out of task creation.

Thanks,

Adrian.