This document was published with and applies to ArcGIS 9.3.
A 9.2 version also exists.
A 9.2 version also exists.
In this topic
- Building the project on a development machine
- Registering by command, using the Regasm utility
- Using an installation program
- Type libraries for managed components
- Use: On a development machine
When you want to register an assembly for COM interop on a development machine, the simplest way is to open the project in Visual Studio 2005, ensure the project-level Register for COM Interop property is set to true, then build the project.
To check a project's settings, click Project Properties from the Project menu, select the Build (C#) or Compile (VB.NET) page, and select the Register for COM Interop check box.
- Use: When testing on a different machine and you do not have an installation program
Sometimes you may want to register an assembly for COM interop without building the project; for example, when first testing your component or if you do not have access to the assemblies source code.
In this case, you can use the assembly registration utility Regasm that ships with the .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) or Visual Studio 2005. Regasm adds entries to the registry, which allows a COM (unmanaged) application to consume .NET classes via COM interop.
Machines with Visual Studio 2005 or the freely available .NET Framework SDK will have this utility installed and other machines may not; therefore, this is not a viable solution for general deployment of your components.
Do the following to use the Regasm command line utility:
- If the target machine has Visual Studio installed, open the Visual Studio 2005 command prompt (the ordinary command prompt will not have the appropriate environment variables set to use this tool).
- If the target machine does not have Visual Studio installed but does have the .NET Framework SDK installed, use the SDK command prompt by choosing Programs, then Microsoft .NET Framework SDK v2.0. If you cannot find it, open a command prompt at the path where Regasm is located. For example, the .NET Framework 2.0 default installation path is C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727.
For Windows Vista, start the command prompt as an administrator by right-clicking the Command Prompt icon and clicking the Run as Administrator option. This allows the Windows Registry to be written to when you use the Regasm.exe utility.
The following example shows the command used to register the assembly (EditTools) with COM. Give the full path to the assembly unless the current directory of the command prompt is the directory where the assembly is located:
regasm EditTools.dll /codebase
The /codebase parameter is an optional parameter that adds information to the registry specifying the path on disk of the assembly. If the component is not to be deployed to the global assembly cache (GAC), this option will be required for ArcGIS to find your component successfully; if the component is installed to the GAC, the option is not required. Regasm has many other options; for a full list, type regasm /? or refer to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site.
Regasm can also be used to unregister assemblies from COM interop, as shown in the following example:
regasm EditTools.dll /unregister
- Use: When deploying to your user
Create an installation program that deploys your component and adds to the installation program an automatic registration step that registers your component for COM interop.
Create installation programs by using third-party installation software or a Visual Studio setup project. For an example of how to create a setup project for a component using WISE, see How to deploy an application.
Type libraries for managed components
A type library (.tlb) can also be exported that contains information describing the types in the assembly. You may want to generate a type library for a component if that component will be used from another development environment, such as within the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) environment embedded with the ArcGIS applications. If you want to add custom commands and tools using the Customize dialog box within the ArcGIS applications, generate a type library.
Visual Studio generates the .tlb file automatically if you have selected the Register for COM Interop setting. If you do not have a .tlb for an existing component, one can be generated by using the Regasm utility and the /tlb option. See the following:
regasm EditTools.dll /tlb:EditTools.tlb