Measurement Studio 2019 extension for Visual Studio 2019 requires allowing synchronous autoload to be enabled

[Grant_LECO]

When installing Measurement Studio 2019 on a windows 7 machine and then running Visual Studio 2019 I was presented with a warning from Visual Studio that said : 

Visual Studio did not load one or more extensions that were using deprecated APIs.  

I was then given three options to click on (the numbers are mine) : 

1.) Allow synchronous autoload

2.) Manage performance

3.) Don't show this message for current extensions

After Selecting Option 1 I was told that Visual Studio needed to restart.

After restarting I was given another warning that said : 

One or more extensions were loaded using deprecated APIs.

I was then given three new options to click on (again the numbers are mine) : 

1.) Don't allow deprecated API used [Recommneded]

2.) Manage Performance

3.) Don't show this message for current extensions.

Selecting option 1 takes and restarting measurement studio takes you back to the first option screen described above.  Selecting option 3 makes the nag message go away and then the Measurement Studio extension under Extensions->Measruement Studio appears to behave as expected.

To see how Visual Studio is keeping track of this request from the menu select Extensions->Manage Extensions and select the text "Change your settings for Extensions" which is down under the left column.   You are then presented with the Options dialog with Extensions highlighted on the left.  All 6 checkboxes should be checked.  The last checkbox is for : 

Allow Synchronous autoload of extensions (Not recommended.  Requires restarting Microsoft Visual Studio.)

This is the one that when unchecked will not allow the Measurement Studio extension to behave properly.

Multiple things are going on here.  My first attempt at installing Measurement Studio 2019 did not allow me to see the Measurement Studio extension show up under Extensions at all.  There were no NI projects available when selecting File->New->Project.  To get things shook loose I did the following steps :

1.) I opened the package manager and clicked on the INSTALLED menu item.

2.) I then selected "Measurement Studio 2019 f1" and clicked the REMOVE button.  I believe I just clicked next a couple of times to finish the uninstall process.

3.) I then used the package manager BROWSE PRODUCTS->Programming Environments menu item and then selected "Measurement Studio and Drivers".

4.) I clicked on Install and the checkbox next to "Measurement Studio" was checked so I hit next or continue just to get that process started.  

5.) I then did a computer restart just to be safe even though I was never asked to do so.

I launched Visual Studio 2019 and selected Create a New Project. Then I searched for "Meas" and selected NI Window Forms Application (which was not available before I uninstalled and reinstalled Measurement Studio as described above). I chose the default name and clicked the Create button.  

I was immediately shut down with a hard error of :

"Can't get the service : National Instruments.Measurement Studio.Interfaces80.IMs Product" 

Pressing OK on this error put me back into the project wizard with the options of Back and Create.  Create took me to the same service error and Back allowed me to pick another project.  After I ran the above process of making sure that Visual Studio 2019 was allowing existing extensions to run using deprecated APIs and restarting Visual Studio 2019 I was able to complete the NI Windows Forms Application (Configure your new project) wizard as expected.

[Grant_LECO · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: I forgot to mention this in my previous post.  Having a copy of Visual Studio 2017 Community installed seemed to hamper my ability to get measurement studio working under Visual Studio 2019.  Removing Visual Studio Community 2017 and then uninstalling Measurement Studio and re-installing Measurement Studio was required on a machine I just performed an update on to get the Measurement Studio extension working under Visual Studio 2019.  I remembered that I had manually removed Visual Studio Community 2017 from the machine that I was describing my installation in my previous post.

[ChristopherBrenes]

Hello Grant,

Measurement Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2019 are not supposed to work together yet. Which makes sense because the release dates of both software were very close. We are currently developing a patch to make that possible and also clarifying that in our public documentation.

As you say, you should still be using 2017.

Regards,

Christopher Brenes

Technical Support Engineer

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support

[Grant_LECO]

I'm not saying that I'm using Visual Studio 2017 with Measurement Studio 2019.  I'm describing how we got our Visual Studio 2019 environment to work with Measurement Studio 2019.  It is working fine for us after following the procedure described in my post. 

I removed Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition from one of the stations I was updating and that seemed to fix the behavior that was specific to that machine.  I don't have Visual Studio 2017 installed on any machines.  We are going from Visual Studio 2015 to Visual Studio 2019 without using Visual Studio 2017.

[RandallCrandall'sCandleHandle · Accepted solution]

Hey Grant and Christopher,

The patch mentioned is actually already released as 2019 f1, so the version that you have installed already includes support for VS 2019. There should not be any compatibility issues.

As for the warning message that is being displayed, this is actually an issue that we are aware of, and you can see an explanation under the Installation Notes of the readme:

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/374658c.html

Like it mentions there, Visual Studio will be deprecating the technology it currently uses for extensions after VS 2019. We have not found any issues with this other than the warning message that you see, so I have no reason to believe that there will be any issues. As for the error message you saw when creating the Windows Forms project, it sounds like there was just a service that wasn't started properly, so I don't really think that is an installation issue.

I hope this eases some of your concerns, and let us know if you see any other abnormal behavior as you're developing.

Cheers,

Ryan Curtis

Product Support Engineer

Automated Test Software R&D

[ChristopherBrenes]

Thanks for the update Ryan!

Regards,

Christopher Brenes

Technical Support Engineer

National Instruments

www.ni.com/support

[Juan89]

The recommendation from NI is that we allow synchronous auto load or that we leave this unchecked?

 This remark would be really helpful since it only specifies that this message is normal, but not what NI recommends.

[Grant_LECO]

I believe the only way for the Measurement Studio extension to work under Visual Studio 2019 is to check the checkbox under Extensions->Manage Extensions (Click 'Change your settings for Extensions') Under Options Choose Environment->Extensions and Check 'Allow synchronous autoload of extensions (Not recommended.  requires restarting Microsoft Visual Studio).

If this is checked before installing Measurement Studio you avoid some confusing nag messages from Visual Studio about some extensions using 'deprecated API calls' when running Visual Studio for the first time after installing Measurement Studio .  If you don't navigate the nag messages as described in this message thread you won't see Measurement Studio listed under the Extensions menu in Visual Studio 2019. 

All this just to say I don't think you are seeing the issue correctly Juan.  Don't think of it as what NI recommends as much as what you need to do if you want to use Measurement Studio 2019 inside Visual Studio 2019. 

I've also noticed that my R# extension will periodically get flagged as causing 'slow load times' and Visual Studio is anxious to disable it so Visual Studio can load x seconds faster.  After you get past a couple of 'ignore this message for all existing extensions' nag messages from Measurement Studio things seem pretty smooth. 

[RandallCrandall'sCandleHandle]

Hey everyone,

You will need to enable the synchronous autoload option for Measurement Studio to load properly. This should just add a small overhead when you open up Visual Studio as the loading of MStudio will not happen in an asynchronous thread.

Cheers,

Ryan Curtis

Product Support Engineer

Automated Test Software R&D

[Juan89]

Thank you for your kind response. That clarifies me that topic.