C++ support in WSE 2.0 SP2

WSE 2.0 SP2 adds some support for adding WSE to C++ projects, which had been missing since the initial release last May.

 

At last, the WSE Configuration Editor, the one that comes up when you right-click in the Solution Explorer and then select WSE 2.0 Settings allows you to enable and disable WSE for C++ project and lets you create policies.

 

 

Before SP2, nothing would happen when you clicked on the item in the context menu. Unfortunately, other IDE integration, such as automatic generation of WSE proxies in a WSE enabled project is still not happening and probably will never happen in WSE 2 because wsewsdl2.exe does not support generation of C++ code. If you take a look with Reflector, you'll find that for some reason, the tool does not emit the proxy code via CodeDOM, hence it would be really difficult for the WSE team to generate C++ proxy classes.

 

A general shortcoming of the IDE integration of the configuration tool, that's not specific the C++ projects are the relative references generated for the policy files. When you enable policy for a C++ an application project (not a web service), the tool will add

 

to the application's configuration file. Unfortunately, the relative reference would only valid during development -- if C++ projects behaved like C# projects in the first place. When you deploy the application you most likely will not have the policyCache.config file one directory higher than the application and its config file. To complicate matters a little further, C++ application projects behave differentely than C# of VB.NET projects in Visual Studio. C++ projects don't even copy the app.config file to the output directory. The best solution is to delete the relative path information from the path to the policyCache.config file.

 

<policy>

<cache name="policyCache.config" />

</policy>

 

and then add a post build event to rename app.config and copy it, together with the policyCache file to the output directory:

 

copy $(ProjectDir)app.config $(OutDir)\$(TargetFileName).config /Y

copy "$(ProjectDir)policyCache.config" $(OutDir)\ /Y

 

 

Changing the path and letting the post build event do the work for you also helps when you build an installer. Simply mark the policyCache.config file as "Content", add "Content File" to the installer project and you're ready to go.

 

Finally, when you build and ASP.NET Web service in C++ you have to make sure that the policyCache.config file is deployed to the web server.