Adobe InDesign CS4 Debug WIN Installation

Question

I need to port an InDesign CS3 plugin to InDesign CS4. In order to do that I've installed the Adobe InDesign CS4 Debug WIN but when I'm trying to start the application I receive the following error message in German: "Diese Anwendung konnte nicht gestartet werden, weil die Anwendungskonfiguration nicht korrekt ist. Zur Problembehebung sollten Sie die Anwendung neu installieren.". In english this should mean something like "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Try to reinstall the application.".
The box I've tried installing on has visual studio C++ 2005 SP1 and InDesign CS3 Debug already installed (which works fine). I've looked through the requirements in the "InDesign® CS4 Read Me" and couldn't find anything that I'm missing.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi Folks,
ID CS4 Debug and ID CS3 Debug can be installed on the same system. The likely reason that the CS4 version is giving that error is because the CS4 version needs some Visual Studio 2005 SP1 DLLs that aren't installed on the computer.
I believe that there are a couple of ways to fix this. One is to install Visual Studio 2005 SP1 (the recommended setup for CS4 plug-in development). When you install SP1 the DLLs needed by ID CS4 Debug will be installed. The other way, I think, is to not SP1, but install the release version of ID CS4 on your system. I understand that the ID CS4 Release version installer will install the DLLs needed by the debug version.
However, if you use VS2005 (no SP1 installed) for CS4 plug-in development you will not be using the recommended development environment for CS4. But if you install SP1, and you want to develop plug-ins for CS3, you will not be using the recommended development environment for CS3 plug-in development. Go figure.
Please note that once you install VS2005 SP1, any plug-ins that you compile will be looking for the SP1 version of the C/C++ Runtime DLLs when the plug-in is launched. The needed DLLs will be on your development system, so everything will seem fine when you test your CS3 plug-ins on your development computer. But when the plug-in is launched on a machine without the SP1 DLLs installed, the plug-in will not run.
I'm not sure of the best way to deal with this (I'm mainly a Mac guy), but there was a thread here entitled
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 about this issue a while back. This thread was partially deleted due to a forum software problem, and one of the ideas that was mentioned was lost from the message thread. Below are the useful (IMHO) missing messages (sent to me by Dirk Becker), who follows the forum using email.
[Ugh! I told Dirk I would write up a Wiki entry for this, but work happened and I haven't gotten to this yet. :-( ]
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MISSING MESSAGES FROM THE THREAD: "[IDCS3 WIN] Visual Studio 2005 SP1"
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FROM: Eugenio Andres
Hi Jim,
From your original error message, the problem is most likely with the installation of the C/C++ SP1 runtime DLL on the machine that does not have the compiler. It's not so simple nowadays as copying over the DLLs, because Microsoft invented the side-by-side system, that allows having several versions of the same file on one machine.
Your options are installing the runtime on each machine (a package for that is available from Microsoft Download) or changing your project to the static runtime ("Multithreaded" instead of "Multithreaded DLL"). I always use static linking in plugins with no problems, although Adobe specifies dynamic in their instructions, but you avoid these "DLL hell" problems.
Regards,
Eugenio Andres - www.ExpertosInformaticos.com
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FROM: Jim Birkenseer
Hi Eugenio,
Thanks for the information.
So, are you saying that I simply have to go into my Plug-In's property page in VS2005 SP1 and change the C/C++ Code Generation from Multi-threaded DLL (/MD) to Multi-threaded (/MT) and rebuild the project? What are the downsides of doing this--or are there any?
<...SNIP...>
-- Jim
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FROM: Eugenio Andres
Hi Jim,
You're welcome.
Yes, that project change should do it. The difference is that with the "DLL" version, your plugin loads the C/C++ runtime shared library (DLL) at runtime and calls it for any needed functions (like strcpy, malloc, etc.). Without the "DLL", the linker puts the C/C++ runtime code directly into your plugin and you don't need the C/C++ runtime SP1 DLL (the error you're getting is because your plugin required the DLL and it's not found on that machine).
The C++ SP1 runtime shared library is different from the C++ non-SP1 library InDesign uses. In this new Windows "side-by-side" scheme, both can live together.
If you use the exact same C/C++ runtime that Adobe uses, then that library is physically shared and it allows to do some "risky" things as e.g. allocating memory in one module (e.g. InDesign) and freeing it in another (e.g. your plugin). But this is usually not recommended and I don't think Adobe is doing it (but then it's only my impression from the code structure).
Anyhow, from the moment you use the SP1 compiler, you're not sharing the runtime any more with InDesign, so it doesn't matter if you compile "MultiThreaded" instead of "MultiThreaded DLL". The difference between these is the size of the plugin and the easyness of distribution, and without DLL you miss possible "automatic" updates of the C++ runtime DLL (because the C/C++ runtime code is embedded in your plugin), but lately new versions of the C/C++ runtime become "different" DLLs, as you can see, so that's not so relevant any more - or if it's critical, you can always recompile your plugin and redistribute if needed.
You can find a brief description of SP1 in
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718695.aspx
It looks like minor non-breaking changes to me, but one never knows...
Cheers,
Eugenio Andres - www.ExpertosInformaticos.com