Service announcement - this blog has moved on

Intro

In November 2007, I started my journey into blogging. Little did I know I was taking the first step that would ultimately made me a Microsoft MVP, took me several times to the campus in Redmond, and even put me on the road to HoloLens development. Back then I took the easy and cheap route and opted for Blogger, then an independent company. Unfortunately, the company was later acquired by Google and after that the platform did not get much love anymore. The online editor, at the time great, became more cumbersome to use over time. Then came LiveWriter, part of Microsoft Essentials, and suddenly I could blog in a WYSIWIG Word style editor. This made life so much easier.

But Live Essentials was slowly being phased out, and little by little, Live Writer was also sunsetting. But in the end of 2015 the product was given a new leash on life by being rechristened as "Open Live Writer". This was especially important as Google changed the Blogger API regularly. When it became a Store app, life became even easier: it got updated automatically!

That is... for the time enthusiasts were still willing to maintain it. The repo associated with Open Live Writer has been showing little activity the last year. Also the Blogger platform, having received very little love by Google, has lost a lot of usage, to such an extent that repos for blogging tools simply close down issues asking for Blogger support calling it "a bunch of work for little payback". And this comment is from 2017.

Recently I had my laptop reinstalled, and when I wanted to re-configure Open Live Writer again, I was greeted with this:

At this point, I had enough. After almost 13 years jumping through several hoops to keep this puppy alive, it was time to move on.

DotNetByExample - The Next Generation

And here we are. I have copied over all the content to my new home on the web, using GitHub pages, after consulting with my dear friend Matteo Pagani. This is the provisionary look & feel, there is still a lot I don't like, but at least it's accessible and maintainable for me again. I also wrote a little tool that updates all links to previous blogposts inside the imported pages, and even generates a JavaScript snippet that redirects all links to the migrated articles in the new blog.

So after 13 years, it's time to leave this spot that has been my home on the web for so long. I hope you will all join me on my continuing journey in development!

Migrating to MRKT2 - NuGet for Unity crashes when using MRTK2

Intro

Recently I was setting up a new HoloLens 2 project. I usually take the following route:

• Create a Unity project with the recommended version for the current MRTK (I use 2.4 now, so that is 2018.4.20f1)
• Switch build platform to UWP
• Import the MRTK2 as source
• Add the MRKT2 to the scene
• Apply optimization settings
• Select the right sound Spatializer (MS HRTF Spatializer)

And then, since recently, I add NuGet for Unity.

Something is rotten in de state of NuGet

Now this comes a nice UnityPackage that you can download from here. Currently it's at 2.0.1. It works fine in plain Unity projects. It works also fine in UWP build. But if you follow the workflow I show above, it breaks. If you open the NuGet package manager, in stead of the UI you expect, you will see only this:

And you will see these errors in the console:

• System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'NugetForUnity.NugetHelper' threw an exception. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
     at NugetForUnity.NugetHelper.LoadNugetConfigFile () [0x0011c] in <b7bde984cef1447da61a3fd28d4789b0>:0
     at NugetForUnity.NugetHelper..cctor () [0x001e6] in <b7bde984cef1447da61a3fd28d4789b0>:0
• NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  NugetForUnity.NugetHelper.LoadNugetConfigFile () (at <b7bde984cef1447da61a3fd28d4789b0>:0)

Great. Now what?

The culprit

When you import the the MRTK2, at some point a NuGet.config file is created. This sits in the Assets root and looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="MSBuildForUnity" value="https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/UnityDeveloperTools/MSBuildForUnity/_packaging/UnityDeveloperTools/nuget/v3/index.json" />
  </packageSources>
</configuration

For some reason, NuGet for Unity does not get very happy about that. If you quit Unity, delete NuGet.config and the NuGet.config.meta, start again and open the NuGet package manager again, a new NuGet.config is created that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <packageSources>
       <add key="NuGet" value="http://www.nuget.org/api/v2/" />
    </packageSources>
    <disabledPackageSources />
    <activePackageSource>
       <add key="All" value="(Aggregate source)" />
    </activePackageSource>
    <config>
       <add key="repositoryPath" value="./Packages" />
       <add key="DefaultPushSource" value="http://www.nuget.org/api/v2/" />
    </config>
</configuration

and if you now click select the NuGet package manger again, it starts up normally.

If tried to add the MSBuildForUnity to the package sources like this, because maybe the MRTK2 needs it for something:

<packageSources>
   <add key="NuGet" value="http://www.nuget.org/api/v2/" />
   <add key="MSBuildForUnity" value="https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/UnityDeveloperTools/MSBuildForUnity/_packaging/UnityDeveloperTools/nuget/v3/index.json" />
</packageSources

but all that does is generate another error:

"Unable to retrieve package list from https://pkgs.dev.azure.com/UnityDeveloperTools/MSBuildForUnity/_packaging/UnityDeveloperTools/nuget/v3/index.jsonSearch()?$filter=IsLatestVersion&$orderby=DownloadCount desc&$skip=0&$top=15&searchTerm=''&targetFramework=''&includePrerelease=false
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found."

So I actually have no idea why this NuGet.config is created or how. But it definitely needs to go, apparently.

The short version

Before importing NuGet for Unity, check for an existing NuGet.config and NuGet.config.meta and delete those; your NuGet package manager will then work as planned.

No code today, because all I wrote today here boils down to the one sentence above :)