This version contains the alpha release of the Visual Studio 2010 extension package that allows you to create, manage, and build help file builder projects completely from within Visual Studio. No changes have been made to it for this release beyond those to fix up installation and build issues. Future updates will include the unimplemented features noted in the first alpha release notes. See the Visual Studio Integration Package topic for more information on usage.

Changed the project language template ID from SandcastleBuilderProject to SHFBProject and changed the title of the VS package extension to "SHFB" in order to reduce the installed path name length so that it does not cause "Path too long" errors on Windows XP. Note that this will break any existing custom templates that you may have created. They will need to be updated to use the new template ID for the project type and the ZIP files will need to be placed in the .\SHFBProject folder. See the Item File Templates topic for updated information.

• Renamed many of the project template folders and files to shorten their names to prevent "Path too long" errors when installing the VS package extension.

• Fixed a bug in the BuildHelp task that caused it to miss command line overrides when the help file builder project was executed with the MSBuild subtask from within a parent project file.

• Fixed a bug in the build process that caused an exception when the documentation project was in the same solution as a project referenced as a documentation source and the project was built from within Visual Studio.

• Fixed a bug in the build process that caused an exception if a project reference had a relative path.

• Fixed a couple of instances where the code was assuming an empty or null result from ExpandEnvironmentVariables() if the variable in question was undefined.

• When loading or converting a project, invalid Language property values are now ignored. This works around an issue where, when a language wasn't defined in the project but a Language environment variable was defined, MSBuild would pick up the environment variable value as the default. If the value was not convertible to a culture info object, the load/convert would fail.

• If the ReferencePath property is defined, it will be passed to and used by GenerateRefInfo.proj when generating reflection information. This allows you to specify an alternate path in which to find reference assemblies that will override hint paths in the project file.

• When parsing solution files for assembly and XML comments file names, duplicate names are now ignored. For example, if a utility project is included in two solutions used as documentation sources, it will be included from the first solution and will be ignored in the second solution. This prevents MRefBuilder from throwing an exception caused by parsing the same assembly twice.

• Updated the FrameworkVersion project property to allow selection of any installed .NET Portable Framework version. This allows for the proper documentation of .NET Portable Framework projects using assemblies and XML comments files specific to that framework.

  Note

  Because .NET Portable Framework projects use an entirely different framework, it is not possible to build a help project containing assemblies and/or Visual Studio projects that target combinations of the normal .NET Framework, Silverlight Framework, and/or the .NET Portable Framework. Each must be built in their own separate help project. You can use the Version Builder plug-in to merge the information from both projects into one help file if necessary.

• For .NET Portable Framework projects where the assemblies are added directly as documentation sources rather than their Visual Studio project, the build engine will automatically include all known .NET Portable Framework assemblies as references. This frees you from having to manually add the portable framework assemblies as references. However, a number of references will be added, many of which may not be needed. If you have a choice, using the Visual Studio solution or project file as the documentation source is preferred as it will only include the required reference assemblies.

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