Register Legacy Components with ArcGIS 10

Summary

The following article provides ArcGIS Developers with instructions on how to register legacy components with 10.

Note:
 Legacy components in this case are components that were built at a previous release of ArcGIS.

Warning:
The following steps are provided from migration purposes only! ESRI recommends that developer recompile and redeploy their customizations for each release. 

ESRI does not provide any support for the following workflow. 

It is the responsibility of the developer to thoroughly test and verify that the component works correctly in the new release. 

If the following does not work, the component must be recompiled in a supported development environment.

Procedure

Note:
 In all of the following workflows, the DLL must be registered with the system. ESRIRegAsm.exe will handle this on the developer's machine. For deployment, the setup program must register the component on its own. This procedure is specifically for adding category registration.

• If the component was written in a language that supports category registration, the component can be registered using ESRIRegAsm.exe. The example below shows how to register a DLL with ArcGIS Desktop.
  
  

  Code:
  %CommonProgramFiles%\ArcGIS\Bin\ESRIRegAsm /p:Desktop "C:\Program\MyDll.dll"

  
  

  Note:
  For .NET developers, ESRI no longer ships policy files with ArcGIS.  Legacy components written in .NET should work with ArcGIS executables because they use an app.config file to redirect the assemblies to the appropriate version. Engine developers who rely on components need to create their own application configuration files for their executables.

  
  
• If the DLL does not support category registration, such as customizations where registry scripts were used after registration to provide the category information, or if the developer used .reg files to register their components, developers can still leverage this method to register the category information.
  
  For example, below is a registry file that adds a custom ZoomIn command to the ESRI Mx Commands Category.
  
  

  Code:
   REGEDIT4
  ; Coclass: prjDisplay.ZoomIn
  ; CLSID: {FC7EC05F-6B1B-4A59-B8A2-37CE33738728}
  ; Component Category: ESRI Mx Commands
  {HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{FC7EC05F-6B1B-4A59-B8A2-37CE33738728}
  \Implemented Categories\{B56A7C42-83D4-11D2-A2E9-080009B6F22B}]

  
  
  The .reg file can be used directly by ESRIRegAsm to create an .ecfg file with the following syntax:
  
  

  Code:
  %CommonProgramFiles%\ArcGIS\Bin\ESRIRegAsm /p:Desktop "C:\Program\MyDll.dll" /f:"C:\Progam\myRegFile.reg"

  
  
• If any other registration mechanism was used, the developer also has an option to create an .xml configuration file. This file can then be used in the ESRIRegAsm utility to create the .ecfg configuration file.
  
  For example, using the same command as above, the developer can create an XML file using Notepad.exe or using an XML Editor following the syntax below:
  
  

  Code:
  <Categories>
     <Category CATID="{B56A7C42-83D4-11D2-A2E9-080009B6F22B}">
        <Class CLSID="{FC7EC05F-6B1B-4A59-B8A2-37CE33738728}" />
     </Category>
  </Categories>
  

  
  
  Save this file as Config.xml. Run ESRI Regasm with the /f: paramenter and include the XML configuration file.
  
  

  Code:
  %CommonProgramFiles%\ArcGIS\Bin\ESRIRegAsm /p:Desktop "C:\Program\MyDll.dll" /f:"C:\Progam\Config.xml"