Activity Creator with .NET 6 Support is now released

[DeanMauro]

A new version of the Activity Creator, the Visual Studio extension that generates custom activity code, has been released!

The latest version works in Visual Studio 2022 and generates activities compatible with .NET 6-windows so you can upgrade all of your .NET Framework activities to a modern version of .NET.

See here for more details, dependencies, and tutorials.

Breaking Changes:

1. You will now need a new feed added to your Nuget package sources in order to pull in the extension’s required dependencies.
2. All projects and activities created with v4 will be compatible with .NET 6. Existing packages should be recreated as new projects to avoid compatibility clashes.

[StefanSchnell]

Sound excellent @DeanMauro, thank you very much.

[kyotaki]

Hi @DeanMauro does the activity creator 4.0 require .NET framework 4.6.1? I installed it in my VS 2022 thinking that the only requirement would have been .NET 6 but when I create a new project it still asks me for .NET framework 4.6.1.

[marian.platonov]

Open Visual Studio Installer → Modify Visual Studio 2022 → .NET desktop development → add .NET Framework 4.6.1 targeting pack

[kyotaki]

Thanks @marian.platonov! You might want to add this requirement here where it is stated that it requires only .net 6 while it seems that also .NET framework 4.6.1 is needed:

Using The Activity Creator

[Bogdan.Istrate]

Hi, everyone,

After the Visual Studio 2022 update to version 17.4.0, the extension is not working anymore.
The issue is with the publishing (see the image below)

[marian.platonov]

Did you check the .tmp folder details?

[Bogdan.Istrate]

Yes, I checked, but nothing relevant:

And the output message error from VS is:
The ‘Publish’ target is not supported without specifying a target framework. The current project targets multiple frameworks, you must specify the framework for the published application.

[marian.platonov]

Check if in the Publish → Profile settings you are providing a similar setup

[Bogdan.Istrate]

Yes, I have the same configuration:

I have 2 machines with VS2022. On the machine with an older version of VS 2022 everything is working well. More than that, I took a snapshot at virtual machine where I have the old version of VS 2022. After that, I updated the VS 2022 at the latest version. After the update, the publish is not working anymore. If I restored the machine to previous state, the extension is working well. I think is something related with an update of .Net Core from this new version

[marian.platonov]

It seems in VS 2022 v17.4 you may have a .NET 7.0.0.

VS 2022 v17.3 you are using a .NET 6.0.11

[Bogdan.Istrate]

OK, this explain everything. What is your recommendation? To keep the VS 2022 at version 17.3 maximum? I suppose that the UiPath migration to the .Net 7.0 will not be in the near future.

Thank you

[marian.platonov]

Yes, keep VS 2022 at 17.3 in case you still need to use Activity Creator v4.0.

[octavioelliot]

@marian.platonov

Would you know another workaround to fix the Extension besides downgrading the VS code.

My environment has some limitations regarding downgrading the VS code.

@StefanSchnell

My issue happens even before publishing (and the same after), some dependencies are failing to be retrieved.
When using the latest version of VS code, you faced the same pattern?

Best regards,
Octavio Elliot

[marian.platonov]

I checked internally, and I was able to use Activity Creator v4 in a VS2022 17.4.1 version.

Regarding the missing dependencies, you may add extra feed sources. Check here Windows-legacy to Windows conversion: What about the Visual Studio made packages? - #8 by marian.platonov

[mdiv (Michael D. Iversen)]

In v3 I was able to build a NuGet package directly from publish, but in v4 it generates some dlls in the output folder.
My way of upgrading from legacy 4.6 to the new 6, was to create a new blank project and from there on create everything manually, making sure everything is .net 6 compatible.

My end result is this folder with dlls. How do I get this into a working nupkg?

I have found multiple guides, but none seems to work.
Last one stated the package should look like this:

But when importing it into UiPath, I get the error

[mdiv (Michael D. Iversen)]

Found the issue, I accidentally clicked the upgrade to Activities 6.0.3.
I have recreated the entire package from scratch and didn’t click the upgrade, and now it works!

[Anshdeep_Tyagi]

Hi @mdiv how you recreated the entire package because I am facing the same error in NuGet package while adding the .dll file. Please help me in this.

[mdiv (Michael D. Iversen)]

Hi, I created the package from VS 2022.

As it is a blank project I went to NuGet Package Manager.
It is very important that you don’t upgrade these packages to 6.0.3.

I did that the first time and couldn’t get it to work, when I didn’t upgrade the second time, then it works.

I hope you can get yours to work!