EA Installation Inspector (Version 4) is a small utility that provides information about the current version of EA and its AddIns.
Minor update that may be useful to some.
Version 4 (June 2017):
- Added a form to display a list of classes and methods provided by the AddIn DLL
Version 3 (September 2016):
- Additional registry locations checked for add-in keys
Version 2 (November 2015):
- Searches HKLM as well as HKCU for Sparx keys
- Provide a pop-up form to make it easier to view detail of an entry
The need
1. During the development and testing of EA AddIns it is all too easy to get an issue with an AddIn not loading correctly - typically, but not always, it means a value in the Windows registry is not correct or a DLL is not in the referenced location. Finding these issues by checking through the registry can be a time consuming task.
2. A customer installs your AddIn and it is not working as expected. So you want to get some concrete information on their installation. For most customers, asking them to check registry settings is really not a good idea.
The solution
A small windows program that reads the information from the registry, performing the relevant searches and presenting the information clearly.
EA Installation Inspector performs this task. Below is an example screen shot illustrating the AddIns status for the system. The colouring of the results provides important information on their status.
A user can double click an entry to present a summary for the seleted AddIn:
Then they can inspect the list of classes and methods provided:
Note: The output from this utility is based on my assumptions of what EA would do in looking for, and loading, AddIns. I do not have information of that process so I cannot guarantee that the utility will report on all relevant issues.
Installation
The attached zip file (EAInstallationInspectorV4.zip) contains the windows executable. Unzip the contents eaInstallationInspectorV4.exe and run.
It may be that you are unable to run the program due to Windows security policies that are set on your system. In that case you will need to get suitable permissions from your computer administrator.
Documentation
Included in the attached zip is a document eaInstallationInspectionInformationV4.pdf which provides information about the utility functions and presentation of its results. This information is also included in the application, available through the help button.
Source
For those interested the source is available on Github at https://github.com/EXploringEA/EAInstallationInspector
Feedback
The functions provided in this utility are those that have helped me. They may not cover your needs - so do let me know if there are any other functions that you would find useful when developing and testing AddIns and I'll look at adding them into future versions of EA Installation Inspector.