What does a PR for NppGTags plugin have to do with the issue at hand? A random link, and the statement “i think you are at windows 10”, doesn’t help anyone understand what you are trying to get across.

If you think the NppGTags solution will help @Guido-Thelen solve his problem, you will have to explain how and why you think that.

edit: Are you suggesting, like in the issue behind that PR, that @Guido-Thelen should install/update his Visual C++ redistributable 2015-2019 ? /edit

@Ekopalypse thanks for your answer.
Below is a screenshot of the message.

Regards
Guido

i think you are at windows 10
https://github.com/pnedev/nppgtags/pull/28
could not get dll for test

Sleeping was of great help.

Yeah, has been the solution to many of my problems as well :-D
I’m not a C# developer either, only know VisualBasic.Net a bit.
But this reminds me of a problem I had playing with the c# plugin interface.
If I remember correctly, the problem was that loading the
.Net class didn’t happen at the time npp loaded the plugin.
You had to hack the import chain to make it work.
Not sure if this is still relevant with a current .Net version either.
If I find the code project article (I suspect it was there), I’ll let you know.

the version built with VS2015 does not have the isUniCode function exported, but it works

Just in case: have not you forgot about the “/exports” parameter of dumpbin?

no problem :-D - Good night.

File Type: DLL

  Section contains the following exports for \SQLinFormNpp64.dll

    00000000 characteristics
    5DD1422F time date stamp Sun Nov 17 13:50:55 2019
        0.00 version
           0 ordinal base
           6 number of functions
           6 number of names

    ordinal hint RVA      name

          5    0 000EF2CE beNotified
          2    1 000EF2AA getFuncsArray
          4    2 000EF2C2 getName
          0    3 000EF292 isUnicode
          3    4 000EF2B6 messageProc
          1    5 000EF29E setInfo

Dump of file C:\Users\guido\Documents\SQL\C#SQLinForm\SQLinFormNpp - Kopie (3)\SQLinFormNpp\bin\Release\SQLinFormNpp.dll

File Type: DLL

  Summary

        2000 .reloc
        2000 .rsrc
        2000 .sdata
       F6000 .text

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community>

So, it looks like it is as you wrote: the export is missing

dumpbin /exports D:\PortableApps\Npp\plugins\PythonScript\PythonScript.dll

Dump of file D:\PortableApps\Npp\plugins\PythonScript\PythonScript.dll

File Type: DLL

  Section contains the following exports for PythonScript.dll

    00000000 characteristics
    FFFFFFFF time date stamp
        0.00 version
           1 ordinal base
           7 number of functions
           7 number of names

    ordinal hint RVA      name

          1    0 000452B0 PyInit_Npp
          2    1 000434E0 beNotified
          3    2 00042730 getFuncsArray
          4    3 00042720 getName
          5    4 0000A420 isUnicode
          6    5 00043880 messageProc
          7    6 00042570 setInfo

  Summary

       16000 .data
        D000 .pdata
       6B000 .rdata
        2000 .reloc
        9000 .rsrc
       F7000 .text

this error happens when isUnicode function is not exported.
isUnicode should always return True.

// NPP plugin platform for .Net v0.93.87 by Kasper B. Graversen etc.
using Kbg.NppPluginNET.PluginInfrastructure;
using NppPlugin.DllExport;
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace Kbg.NppPluginNET
{
    internal class UnmanagedExports
    {
        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static bool isUnicode()
        {
            return true;
        }

        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static void setInfo(NppData notepadPlusData)
        {
            PluginBase.nppData = notepadPlusData;
            Main.CommandMenuInit();
        }

        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static IntPtr getFuncsArray(ref int nbF)
        {
            nbF = PluginBase._funcItems.Items.Count;
            return PluginBase._funcItems.NativePointer;
        }

        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static uint messageProc(uint Message, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)
        {
            return 1;
        }

        private static IntPtr _ptrPluginName = IntPtr.Zero;

        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static IntPtr getName()
        {
            if (_ptrPluginName == IntPtr.Zero)
                _ptrPluginName = Marshal.StringToHGlobalUni(Main.PluginName);
            return _ptrPluginName;
        }

        [DllExport(CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
        private static void beNotified(IntPtr notifyCode)
        {
            ScNotification notification = (ScNotification)Marshal.PtrToStructure(notifyCode, typeof(ScNotification));
            if (notification.Header.Code == (uint)NppMsg.NPPN_TBMODIFICATION)
            {
                PluginBase._funcItems.RefreshItems();
                Main.SetToolBarIcon();
            }
            else if (notification.Header.Code == (uint)NppMsg.NPPN_SHUTDOWN)
            {
                Main.PluginCleanUp();
                Marshal.FreeHGlobal(_ptrPluginName);
            }
            else
            {
                Main.OnNotification(notification);
            }
        }
    }
}

Any idea where I can find this switch?

Regards
Guido

I just ran a couple quick experiments (downloaded the released versions of your plugins using plugins admin):

it loads fine in either, and gives

If I copy over the 32bit DLL and put it in the folder for the 64bit Notepad++, NPP gives me the error:

That’s similar, but is explicit about the 32-bit nature of the plugin DLL. I think “Failed to load” is indicating something different – a bug in your source code for the plugin, probably.

You said you did a lot of refactoring, so you probably got something wrong during the refactoring.

It might be a good idea for you to try to recompile the 5.3.35 version of your code in your existing setup, and make sure that you can still compile it properly and get it to work. Then compare VS settings between the two, to make sure that there isn’t some missing external resource or option difference.

I know that sometimes you cannot avoid doing “major refactoring” when adding a new feature or changing libraries you depend on. But when at all possible in my software development, I try to make incremental changes and tests, and make sure everything still works at various stages along the way, because that helps prevent issues like this.