Hello.

I have a my own custom tool for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. It consists of 5 assemblies: 3 assemblies with code that used heavily in my other projects, 1 assembly-wrapper above VS2008 SDK and assembly with the tool.

If I'd debug my tool from visual studio, using "Run external program" option with command line "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" and arguments "/ranu /rootsuffix Exp" all work perfectly.

After that I trying to deploy it to my working VS copy, not to experimental hive doing: gacutil /i Asm1.dll for all my assemblies and doing RegAsm Asm1.dll only for assembly with custom tool. Neither of utils prints any error, all work as planned, even registry keys appeared. But my tool don't work even after PC restart. What did I do wrong?

Wrapper looks like that:

[ComVisible(true)]
public abstract class CustomToolBase : IVsSingleFileGenerator, IObjectWithSite
{
    #region IVsSingleFileGenerator Members
    int IVsSingleFileGenerator.DefaultExtension(out string pbstrDefaultExtension)
    {
        pbstrDefaultExtension = ".cs";
        return 0;
    }

    int IVsSingleFileGenerator.Generate(string wszInputFilePath, string bstrInputFileContents, string wszDefaultNamespace, IntPtr[] rgbOutputFileContents, out uint pcbOutput, IVsGeneratorProgress pGenerateProgress)
    {
        GenerationEventArgs gea = new GenerationEventArgs(
            bstrInputFileContents,
            wszInputFilePath,
            wszDefaultNamespace,
            new ServiceProvider(Site as Microsoft.VisualStudio.OLE.Interop.IServiceProvider)
                .GetService(typeof(ProjectItem)) as ProjectItem,
            new GenerationProgressFacade(pGenerateProgress)
                );

        if (OnGenerateCode != null)
        {
            OnGenerateCode(this, gea);
        }

        byte[] bytes = gea.GetOutputCodeBytes();

        int outputLength = bytes.Length;
        rgbOutputFileContents[0] = Marshal.AllocCoTaskMem(outputLength);
        Marshal.Copy(bytes, 0, rgbOutputFileContents[0], outputLength);
        pcbOutput = (uint)outputLength;
        return VSConstants.S_OK;
    }
    #endregion

    #region IObjectWithSite Members
    void IObjectWithSite.GetSite(ref Guid riid, out IntPtr ppvSite)
    {
        IntPtr pUnk = Marshal.GetIUnknownForObject(Site);
        IntPtr intPointer = IntPtr.Zero;
        Marshal.QueryInterface(pUnk, ref riid, out intPointer);
        ppvSite = intPointer;
    }

    void IObjectWithSite.SetSite(object pUnkSite)
    {
        Site = pUnkSite;
    }
    #endregion

    #region Public Members
    public object Site { get; private set; }

    public event EventHandler<GenerationEventArgs> OnGenerateCode;

    [ComRegisterFunction]
    public static void Register(Type type)
    {
        using (var parent = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0", true))
            foreach (CustomToolRegistrationAttribute ourData in type.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CustomToolRegistrationAttribute), false))
                ourData.Register(x => parent.CreateSubKey(x), (x, name, value) => x.SetValue(name, value));
    }

    [ComUnregisterFunction]
    public static void Unregister(Type type)
    {
        using (var parent = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0", true))
            foreach (CustomToolRegistrationAttribute ourData in type.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CustomToolRegistrationAttribute), false))
                ourData.Unregister(x => parent.DeleteSubKey(x, false));
    }

    #endregion
}

My tool code:

[ComVisible(true)]
[Guid("55A6C192-D29F-4e22-84DA-DBAF314ED5C3")]
[CustomToolRegistration(ToolName, typeof(TransportGeneratorTool))]
[ProvideObject(typeof(TransportGeneratorTool))]
public class TransportGeneratorTool : CustomToolBase
{
    private const string ToolName = "TransportGeneratorTool";

    public TransportGeneratorTool()
    {
        OnGenerateCode += GenerateCode;
    }

    private static void GenerateCode(object s, GenerationEventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof (Parser.System));
            using (var reader = new StringReader(e.InputText))
            using (var writer = new StringWriter(e.OutputCode))
            {
                Generator.System = (Parser.System) serializer.Deserialize(reader);
                Generator.System.Namespace = e.Namespace;
                Generator.GenerateSource(writer);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            e.Progress.GenerateError(ex.ToString());
        }
    }
}

Resulting registry keys:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators\{FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Generators\{FAE04EC1-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}\TransportGeneratorTool]
@="TransportGeneratorTool"
"CLSID"="{55a6c192-d29f-4e22-84da-dbaf314ed5c3}"
"GeneratesDesignTimeSource"=dword:00000001
"GeneratesSharedDesignTimeSource"=dword:00000001