So, I rebuilt a workstation because I am soon to lose my current wicked awesome hp laptop.  Like many people, reloading a workstation is both, a pleasure and a pain.  On one hand, you get to refresh your xp installation, so everything seems super fast again.  On the down side, none of your tools, plug-ins, extensions, settings, or any of that stuff is in place, so you have to redo all that work.

Anyway, I installed visual studio 2008 and Visio.  Then, like zillions of other people, I said "Hey!  Where did the generate menu go?".  Turns out, Visio Professional is just not quite professional enough to generate a script from a database diagram.  Good grief.  So, where is this Enterprise Architect version?  Sweet.  Its on msdn.  Pulled it down, and started to install, and soon, all would be well in the world....or so I thought.

Now, I came up against the dreaded "You must first install one of the qualified Visual Studio editions" or it's evil cousin "you must first install visual studio 2003 enterprise architect".  Blast!  Turns out, you can only install the good Visio if you have visual studio 2003 or 2005 enterprise architect installed.  You have got to be kidding me.  I have msdn.  I have access to both of those applications.  I do not want to re-install visual studio 2005 over my new, pristine 2008 installation, but I really need Visio, with the generate functionality.

Well, after lots of searching, and accepting the fact that I was probably violating some sort of licensing agreement, I came up with a hack workaround.  If you have an installation of visual studio 2008, and want Visio enterprise architect, but do not want to install visual studio 2005, this can work for you.  I gave filemon a try, but it didn't look like it was doing anything interesting.  Then, I gave regmon a try, filtered on msiexec, and found some interesting keys.  The last thing it did before bailing out on the installation was look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0.  I did have that key in my registry, but it obviously didn't have exactly what the installer was looking for.  In the 9.0 folder was my visual studio 2008 installation.

I exported the 8.0 folder using regedit for a backup, exported the 9.0 folder, opened the exported .reg file, did a search/replace on "9.0" to "8.0", and saved it.  Then, I imported the modded 9.0->8.0 .reg file into the registry, basically pretending that my visual studio 2008 installation was actually a visual studio 2005 installation, at least as far as the registry was concerned.  Fired up the Visio installer, and, kachow, it worked.  After installing, I reverted back to my original 8.0 export, and everything is good to go.

It is a hack to get you going, but if you have the same problem, and are crazy like me, this can get you going.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

I upgraded HydrogenCMS for it's second release to asp.net mvc preview 2 tonight, and updated the HydrogenCMS.net site.  Overall, it was not a difficult exercise.  I had a hiccup or two because I had a view unfortunately named "View", and with the renaming of the RenderView method to View, it caused some problems.

Another issue was simply changing ViewData to ViewData.Model for the strongly typed pages.  Simple enough.

And, finally, there were some routing changes.  Routing, apparently, is not my strong suit, so it took a little effort to get it lined up because I am trying for the super seo friendly url of just the slug of the page, so there is a little kung fu in there, but not much.  The biggest routing issue was how Default.aspx actually gets called now, so you have to put a redirect in the codebehind, where the old version just never got called.  I don't know what the reason for that is, but a little research can fix that.

All in all, considering how much effort the .net people are putting into asp.net mvc, and how much they are listening to the community, the changes were minimal.  If you have a project in preivew 1 or 2 (I upgraded from the first preview), then I suggest upgrading.  It is mostly painless, and it will keep you from having to drop a big chunk of updates in when the library goes rtm.

Jesse Foster | jf26028

Well, at least an early version was released. 

HydrogenCMS is a fully functional, extremely minimalist, open source, cms using asp.net mvc, linq2sql, linq2xml, and a bunch of code/ideas from BlogEngine, Kigg, and a ton of other places.  It started out as an experiment on some of the new technologies floating around in the asp.net world, but it also fills a need. 

Most of us, at one time or another, have had that relative or client who needs a simple, tiny web site that just has a few pages.  Something easy to stand up, configure, skin, and turn lose so they can do their own updates.  There aren't many apps like that, especially in asp.net.  Hopefully, HydrogenCMS can help fill that gap.  With the simple xml providers, you just deploy the site, change the admin username/password, and tell your client the metaweblog api url, and you are good to go.  They can use Live Writer or some other blogging utility to manage the whole site.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.

I will produce a set of blog entries in the next few days to help document the system, and give some insight into some of the features and design points that may not be obvious up front.  If you have any comments, feel free to drop me a line here, on my contact page, or at the CodePlex site.

Jesse Foster | jf26028