My biggest Upgrade Problems .dll versions

My biggest upgrade problems seem to be the .dll versions of OA or SF. Especially when working with starterkits that reference an older or other version.

Its' probably because I am not used to WebApp (used WebSites).

Anybody else with the same problem and/or tips how to avoid .dll missmatches. What .dlls should SF Manager upgrade automatically.

Markus

Hello Markus Berchtold,

Have you tried including your project in the Project Manager and then simply upgrading it to the desired versions. It's much easier and error-proof than replacing the .dll-s; moreover, please note the PM updates the config files as well. For more information on how to include your project in the Project Manager, please take a look at this article from our documentation.

Regards,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

Dear Boyan

I tried this with the old Corporate Starter Kit and all the oder projects in the solution referenced to older verions and those were of course not updated if I am correct.

Markus

Hello Markus Berchtold,

Can you elaborate a little bit more on the exact steps you did and what you mean by "the other projects in the solution referenced to older versions and those were of course not updated". Also, did you make sure to use the proper version of the project manager. Any additional information on this issue will be of use, as generally there should be no problems including your project in the PM and using the upgrade option.

Greetings,
Boyan Barnev
the Telerik team

Hey Markus,

I suspect I know what you're talking about.  Sitefinity releases and SDK releases are not always perfectly aligned.  If you're following the internal builds, then they are even more prone to being mis-aligned.

I've also tried upgrading the SDK projects and encountered similar issues to what you're describing.

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Here is the deal:

The SDK solutions (Charity, Corporate, etc.) contain multiple projects.  These projects reference assemblies in a shared ~/Dependencies folder, instead of the ~/bin folder.  Sitefinity's upgrade tool only updates the assemblies in ~/bin.  Consequently, using Sitefinity's upgrade tool on an SDK project doesn't really update the project.  

I recorded a view showing how to overcome these challenges:

http://tv.telerik.com/watch/sitefinity/how-to-upgrade-sitefinity-4-project

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Your larger point is regarding the 'DLL hell' experience.  This is an experience I've had with .NET in general (quite apart from Sitefinity).   Do you have any suggestions for how to better manage this experience?

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Do you have any suggestions for how to better manage this experience?

Have SF implement assembly binding via a config file to whatever version is in the bin folder ;)

@Gabe

Thanks for the feedback. It simply made me feel better to know that someone knowing .net an sitefinity quite a bit has some of the same problems.

Some thoght though

a) if you upgrade the dll in your dependencies folder would this not result in errors for all other projects not yet upgraded?

b) the lenght of the video was 20 minutes - you had to work slow because we can not watch so fast, but then again you did some stuff online - So a simple upgrade (which is not so simple) can take some time.

c) Since these are simply play around projects there are no workflows steps included like
- backup your DB
- backup you web
- upgarde locally
- uploade whatever is needed, and make sure not to upload what is not needed

d) In my simple programmers mind the solution would be the following. For any SitefinityWebApp if you have additional projects that need some .dll that are not in the SitefinityWebApp bin - add them to the SitefinityWebApp bin and make add a reference to this dll.

Like this a solution would have only one set op .dll in the SitefinityWebApp/bin folder and all aditional projects would reference to these dll. Kind of your dependencies folder solution but keeping it seperated for each project. (Don't know how this would effect the workflow if you needed the additinal projects in different SitefinityWebApps.

e) another problem I had once was that I transfered some OA dll to the server.
Now Usually I check with chechasm for dependencies of child .dlls not on the server. So I search top down for what child dll is missing. If I remember correct I had once a child dll that was referencing a parent dll that was replaced. This remaining child dll was no longer needed in the project but referenced to an earlier version.

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Telerik.Web.UI used to be seperate dlls for the controls. Would it make sence to get the OA and SF dll into one package as well. What would that mean for developers, speed, loadtime, telerik release problems or so

Gabe once again thanks for sharing - it make me feel not so bad.

Markus