Newbie At Building from Source - Couple Questions

[KevinRossen]

I've been tinkering with the source code a little bit. I'm wanting to experiment with building from source, but I'm a complete newbie at this aspect of programming. I've followed the directions in the manual as best I can, but I think I'm missing some initial setup steps and it doesn't look like that page has been updated in a while.

I have a couple questions. First, can anyone point me to some helpful resources on using Visual Studio for building from source code? Also, does the license on Open Dental require other forks to post their source code online? I've come across Practice Web's build and I'm not seeing their source posted anywhere. Should I contact them about this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[jsalmon]

I don't think you have to redistribute your source code, but you cannot sell "your version" of the software unless you change a vast majority of it (you can read the GNU licence for more detail on that).

If you're just going to be tinkering around with it for personal usage feel free and please do. Request hooks and create your own plugin if you want to stick with our main branch of releases instead of going off into your own wilderness.

As for building Open Dental, that page is still accurate and hasn't needed to change for a long time. Building solutions inside visual studio can be very easy or very complex so why not let me know what compile errors you are getting and I can help you better from there.

[KevinRossen]

Alright, again, newbie when it comes to building. I followed the instructions on the source code page to get it via TortioseSVN to a folder on my desktop called OpenDentalSource. That seemed to work just fine. I double clicked OpenDental_14_2.sln in that folder to open the project in Visual Studio (2013 express for Windows). From there, I seem to have problems. Here are some screenshots:

I get this when one Visual Studio opens:


Here's a list of errors that comes up next:


And here's the error list in the log:


I know I'm doing something wrong, but not sure what I'm missing.

[dgraffeo]

Hello,

We use Visual Studio 2012 here. Perhaps you could try using that version and see if that fixes some of the problems. Additionally you will often get errors about "Mixed mode assembly" when trying to compile the project in release mode. Try to compile it in Debug mode to begin with. To do this make sure you right click OpenDental in the solution explorer (within Visual Studio, this is a window on the right that shows all your files) and select Set as StartUp Project. Then on the top bar where the buttons for saving your file are there should be a green "play" arrow with Start. Right next to it on the right there should be a drop down menu. Make sure it says Debug when you try to run it for testing purposes. On this webpage http://www.opendental.com/manual/sourcecode.html there is a section that deals with the mixed mode assembly errors that you can also try. Specifically, the section that is near the bottom.

Hope this helps, and apologies if you already tried all this!

[jsalmon]

Your first two "issues" are because you are using Visual Studio Express (not full version) and they do not support web service projects. Open Dental will still work just fine so you can just ignore those errors or purchase Visual Studio and it will start to work.

And here's the error list in the log:

This issue is explained in detail in the Error: Mixed mode assembly section of:
http://www.opendental.com/manual/sourcecode.html

There is also a very popular thread on the forum because this is the most common error that developers can't seem to get past. The quickest solution (that isn't really a solution if you ask me) is to turn off "Generate serialization assembly" by right clicking on the OpenDental project > Properties > Build tab > change the "Generate serialization assembly" combo box to Off.

Link to popular thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3964&p=22189&hilit= ... ode#p22189

[KevinRossen]

Thank you. Will test some more and report back.

[jsalmon]

Keep in mind I've seen it to where the sgen.exe.config file does not exist in folders that it is required for the actual fix to occur. You might do a search for sgen.exe and make sure there is a corresponding sgen.exe.config. Then it'll probably work.

[KevinRossen]

Just wanted to provide an update for any other newbies at programming out there like me. I think most of the problems I was having before came from using the wrong version of Visual Studio (Express in my case). Since my original post, Microsoft has released a community edition of Visual Studio 2013, which is free to use under certain circumstances. After I changed to using that program I was able to get the source code to build. Thanks for the pointers from others so far.

[rhaber123]

Visual Studio Community 2015 (free edition) may be needed to compile the newer version of OD