MVVM Light installers and Nuget (including Silverlight 5) #mvvmlight : Silverlight Feeds

MVVM Light installers and Nuget (including Silverlight 5) #mvvmlight

by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/18/2011 9:10:12 PM

I just pushed two big updates to MVVM Light setup components.

MSI installers with Silverlight 5 support

The MSI installers are available on Codeplex. The current version supports Silverlight 3, Silverlight 4, Silverlight 5 (new), WPF 3.5 SP1, WPF 4, Windows Phone 7.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. The installer for V3 is available, as well as the one for V4 beta.

NuGet support including Silverlight 5

I also pushed a new version of the NuGet packages which includes Silverlight 5. To install MVVM Light into an existing application with the help of the NuGet package manager in Visual Studio, check the instructions.

If you look for “mvvmlight” on NuGet, you will find four packages:

MVVM Light: The whole package, libraries + ViewModelLocator + MainViewModel. Installing this also modifies App.xaml to install the ViewModelLocator. This package is for V3 of MVVM Light!
MVVM Light libraries only: Installs only the DLLs and references them. This package is for V3 of MVVM Light!
MVVM Light [Preview]: This is the whole package too, but for V4 beta.
MVVM Light libraries only [Preview]: Just the DLLs, for V4 beta.

Update on V4’s availability

One of the most annoying issues in V3 is a memory leak that can appear in the Messenger component in certain circumstances. I will post details in due time, but there is indeed a risk that an instance is not garbage collected if it is registered with the Messenger with a non-static method, and if the developer omits to unregister the instance before deleting it.

Because of the promise of a “weak” registration, I really want to solve this issue. Currently, I am able to completely solve it in WPF, and to solve it in most cases in Silverlight (including Windows Phone). There is still one special case in Silverlight where a memory leak may remain, and I am currently working on handling this. I am not sure that there is a solution for this last scenario, but there are other alternatives that it is not a blocking issue anymore.

Once this fix is fully tested, I still have a few things I would like to add in V4. However I am also aware that we have been in beta (and alpha) for quite some time already, and it is very possible that I procrastinate some of these features into V5.

Happy coding!
Laurent