Deploy & Install: Manifest Integrity

We talked about the Revit manifest file in detail before. It is obvious that each mandatory manifest property such as AddIn Type, Assembly, FullClassName, and ClientId/AddInId cannot have any typos. Otherwise, Revit will not load the addin assembly.

For example, supposing there is a typo in the assembly name of a manifest file like the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RevitAddIns>
<AddIn Type="Application">
  <Assembly>C:\Temp\RevitAddinTest\bin\Debug\RevitAddinTest1.dll</Assembly>
  <FullClassName>RevitAddinTest.ExtApp</FullClassName>
  <ClientId>5ad0b84c-b30b-46fb-b9ff-f4bb4a90750a</ClientId>
  <Name>RevitAddinTest</Name>
</AddIn>
</RevitAddIns>

When Revit tries to parse the manifest and finds the assembly is not available, an error message saying Add-in Assembly Not Found like the following will show up:

If a full class name is wrongly specified like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RevitAddIns>
<AddIn Type="Application">
  <Assembly>C:\Temp\RevitAddinTest\bin\Debug\RevitAddinTest.dll</Assembly>
  <FullClassName>RevitAddinTest.ExtApp11</FullClassName>
  <ClientId>5ad0b84c-b30b-46fb-b9ff-f4bb4a90750a</ClientId>
  <Name>RevitAddinTest</Name>
</AddIn>
</RevitAddIns>

A Wrong Full Class Name error message will appear this time:

When the AddIn Type is misspelled:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RevitAddIns>
<AddIn Type="Applicaton">
  <Assembly>C:\Temp\RevitAddinTest\bin\Debug\RevitAddinTest.dll</Assembly>
  <FullClassName>RevitAddinTest.ExtApp</FullClassName>
  <ClientId>5ad0b84c-b30b-46fb-b9ff-f4bb4a90750a</ClientId>
  <Name>RevitAddinTest</Name>
</AddIn>
</RevitAddIns>

the Invalid Format AddIn File message box will be displayed:

Another very easy to ignore matter, sometimes Revit is tolerant enough about it, but some other times not, is the encoding of the AddIn file.

As the declaration of the manifest file (in fact nothing more than XML) indicates, the xml version is 1.0 and the encoding should be utf-8 rather than ANSI or UNICODE:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
…
…

If the encoding of the Revit manifest file does not match with the utf-8, most of times it may be just OK and Revit can still find the addin assembly, load it, and register the applications/commands in it. But in case the manifest file contains any non-ANSI characters, things will be different as demonstrated before.

So it is always a good practice to make sure the encoding of the manifest file is utf-8. If the NotePad is used to create or edit the AddIn file, the utf-8 encoding can be found from the Save As options:

The Check Integrity feature of Revit Manifest Organizer widget of RevitAddinWizard can check the integrity of all Revit manifest files in a specified folder, either the current user roaming, all users, or an arbitrary one, with a single click, and report problems back for review. Then some other features, such as View Selected, Edit Selected, Delete Selected, Move Selected manifest files, or so in the same Revit Manifest Organizer widget, can be used to help inspect the files in detail and fix the problems if necessary.