I am trying to compile a project in visual basic into an Arc map add on. I am receiving two warnings that are preventing the build from completing. Both errors entail that the assembly ESRI.ArcGIS.Desktop.AddIns could not be found. I received this project and source code by request from someone else. From other responses on here to similar issues in compiling in Visual Basic I have made sure that the Register for COM interop is unchecked in the compile tab of the project properties and I have made sure the Copy Local and Specific Version in the References tab is set to false.
When I searched through my computer I was not able to find the ESRI.ArcGIS.Desktop.AddIns assembly in order browse and assign a reference path in Visual Basic. It seems the it is not on my computer. I have not had any experience with an assembly before, so my question is how do I get access to this ESRI.ArcGIS.Desktop.AddIns assembly?
Best Answer
While the SDK is required to create new projects (the templates that appear when you choose
File>New Project), it should be possible to compile existing projects without the ArcObjects SDK.Also, I've heard:
1) you don't really need Visual Studio to compile - you can use MSBuild, which is now part of the .NET framework installation.
2) you can compile arcobjects projects without checking out an Esri license. This is helpful when you have to build legacy versions of a project, but can't afford licenses on the build servers.