The ORM Foundation

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2022.

What about NORMA... now and in future versions of VS... Are there any plans?

Where is the correct place to ask questions like these?

Best regards, 

 You can ask questions here.

In 2016, I recruited a small team of volunteers to fix bugs in NORMA. The project resolved about 80 issues which included upgrading NORMA to VS2017 and then to VS2019.

About three years ago, the team became inactive - mainly because  I contracted a serious illness that put me out of action for a long time. 

However, the JIRA project is still active so if you know of anyone who would like to help, please let me know.

Ken 

Hello,

I'm very close to an official VS2022 version (digitally signed and ready to post to the Visual Studio store). You can see the latest commit at https://github.com/ormsolutions/NORMA.

Unfortunately there is always something that goes wrong between versions, especially with the 64-bit change for VS2022. The normal registration for external assemblies (code generation and database import) is not working for some reason so I have some additional research to do.

Anyway, it's a lot closer than it was 2 days ago. Diagrams and all extensions are working fine. I was expecting a full-day task, but I'm physically dragging (positive COVID test this evening explained the lack of energy).

I'm also planning on releasing 'Per-User' versions to enable installation without admin rights. The only lost functionality is that I can't automatically register all of my xml schema files (there are dozens) with Visual Studio, so if you open an .orm file or a generated file in the XML editor you won't get any IntelliSense help. Instead you'll see a 'Load NORMA Schemas' item on the XML menu. This opens the schema catalogs, and VS automatically resolves schemas from catalogs open in the editor. It isn't perfect, but saves a lot of trouble with admin rights, and the per-user install will also support automatic update, not just automatic download.

So, hopefully I'll track down the last issue quickly and get updates posted by the end of the year, possibly even before Christmas. This isn't the only thing I'm working on though, just the only thing I'm not getting paid for : )

Cheers, 

-Matt 

Quick update:

The existing and PerUser versions were updated in the Marketplace for VS2019 and VS2017.

Unfortunately the correspond install files for VS2022 are currently being rejected by the marketplace site with a totally generic error message. I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. 

I opened a ticket with Microsoft last week and will hopefully get some response now that worker bees are returning after the holidays.

It took a long time (and some pestering) for Microsoft to get back to me and then another chunk of time to find the issue, but we got it.

A small error in a build script copied the wrong PLiX.vsix file into the 64-bit version. The site was catching what the VSIX compiler and the VS installer both missed: the identifier of the embedded package did not match the identifier in the manifest file.

The VS2022 versions are now available to install in the Marketplace. Just open Extensions/Manage Extensions in Visual Studio and search for NORMA.

If you use the new Per User installation you can get automatic updates when Visual Studio launches. The differences are described on the download page.

 -Matt

P.S. Future versions will be addressed when they are released in the future. Given the shift to current regular updates within the tool I don't expect a new version any time soon. The switch from 32 to 64 bit could not feasibly be an incremental update to VS2019, so you got VS2022. Any new NORMA release is made against the latest official build.