Manifests and Reg Free Active X Addins

1

We are learning how to create registry free active x addins.

This involves creating the .dll and a manifest document, then calling the Microsoft Manifest Tool (mt.exe) to embed the manifest into the .dll.

This is the command line that has been suggested we should be using:

mt.exe" -manifest Inv2022Idx.X.Manifest -outputresource:“Inv2022Idx.dll”;#2

Does anyone have experience with mt.exe? Like will this command line work on a .dll not created from CSharp?

regards

Brian

2

Supplemental to my post - this manifest stuff comes under the broad topic of Side by Side Assemblies

3

Hi,
You should be able to add the manifest to the project as a resource.
(project/resources and images)
Resource type should be MANIFEST
Resource ID CREATEPROCESS_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID
(Which is 1 apparently)
Though maybe as you have a #2 in your command line, maybe 2 would be good, sorry dont know.

CREATEPROCESS_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID = 1;
ISOLATIONAWARE_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID = 2;
ISOLATIONAWARE_NOSTATICIMPORT_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID = 3;
MINIMUM_RESERVED_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID = 1; //inclusive
MAXIMUM_RESERVED_MANIFEST_RESOURCE_ID = 16; //inclusive

4

I might be wrong on this as I haven’t tried it (yet, on my todo list) - but I though the host application manifest needed to include the information on what dll’s to use a side by side etc.

5

I took on board Roger’s suggestion (re Adding the Manifest to the project) and did some googling on this subject and happened upon a Final Builder forum post mentioning Project Options>Manifest .

I did both and now my problem is solved - our addin works as a Reg Free addin.

But now I have check which of those actions made it work and then, learn more about Manifests.

I have worked with Delphi and windows for 20 years and have never come across a Manifest.

6

Cool,
glad to hear you got it working,

As per vincent’s post, I also was vaguely of the opinion that the host application manifest had the dll’s information in it.
That is for the common case where 1 dll is used by multiple applications. In this case it is likely that the 1 application can choose from a bunch of different 3rd party dlls (depending on what it wants to do)
I assume this might be a little used option of the windows feature by the application developers.