Hi all

Can anybody with experience of module developing give me a hand to sort out some confusion I have? I'm trying to manually write a manifest file for my own module, which is just made up of the standard set of user controls, scripts, referenced DLLs etc. However, the module install is acting strange, and I cannot successfully install the module. The install procedure just hangs, in DNN 6.0.1. I'm working on the basis that I have an incorrectly written manifest file, and I think I need to clarify what the exact purpose of the various file location nodes are, i.e.

<component type="Script"> ...
<component type="Module"> ...
<component type="Assembly"> ...
<component type="ResourceFile"> ...

In particular, each of these seems to need to contain some combination of <basepath> and <path>, nodes. But, are these to tell DNN where to look for files relative to the manifest file, in order to locate them prior to installation, or instead, are they the required destinations for files after installation. Its probably supposed to be so obvious, that's why it doesn't seem to be specified in the documentation.

Does each component use the <basepath> and <path> nodes consistently, or does it vary for different types of components?

Also, is there a required order for the different <component type= ...> nodes that I need to adhere to in order to persuade DNN to handle my manifest file successfully?

Thanks if you can clarify any of this for me.

Although I have read the wiki already, I did find the Module component documentation a bit too cursory. Although my problem may or may not be to do with file locations, I could not find enough reliable examples on which to compare my file. I'm having trouble because the module install just silently fails, so even though the manifest looks OK to me from what is documented, I must be doing something wrong, hence I thought some more detailed examples would be useful. I did post about this before but unfortunately didn't get too far then either, here is what I originally was asking about, although now I am still having the same problem in DNN 6.0.1:

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"I have a DNN module compiled into a DLL from a VS 2008 'DNN Compiled module' solution, but I am having trouble with the installation into DNN 5.6.

I wanted to manually created a manifest, but I think my attempts so far have been incorrect, as the install from the Module Definitions page appears to silently fail, and the module is not properly registered with DNN. I think my confusion is about how to present the DLL in the manifest file, but I cannot find an appropriate example to follow for the new manifest format for version 5.x.

At the moment I am trying to use the 'Assembly' manifest component node, perhaps this is where my trouble lies. My question is, can you point me in the direction of an example manifest that corresponds to my scenario. Should I be still using the 'Module' component node, or is this specifically for ASCX files? If I have a compiled DLL containing all my controls already, how do I include the DLL in the manifest so that DNN will install the modules correctly?"
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Thanks if you can advise

OK thanks for that. I just need to ask: should the resources.zip archive contain the *.ascx files for my user controls, and the *.dll files containing my precompiled code, that have already been referenced in the manifest under the <component type="Module">, <component type="Assembly"> nodes etc., or should it only contain supplementary file types that are not covered by those dedicated nodes, i.e., should it only include files that would otherwise go into <component type="File"> node: images, text files etc. In particular I am not sure if the resources.zip should include my *.resx resource files, or whether they will be picked up automatically by the DNN module installer.

It would be great if you could clarify this for me.

Cheers