System.Data.SQLite and SubSonic 3: Works great in VS2008, but not in VS2010

Question

Last year, I used SubSonic 3 and SQLite in a VS2008 project very successfully and was quite pleased with the results. Just recently, I tried to setup SubSonic 3 and SQLite in a VS2010 project and have been met with the inner exception when trying to instantiate a new SimpleRepository:

The type initializer for 'System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteFactory' threw an exception

Just to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I tried the exact same code and app.config file in VS2008 and no problem. Weird!

Currently, I'm using SubSonic 3.0.0.4 and the x64 version of System.Data.SQLite 1.0.73.0 (3.7.6.3) (though I tried the 32 bit version as well.) I added both DLLs as a Reference and set "Copy Local" to TRUE.

My App.Config looks like:

  <system.data>
    <DbProviderFactories>
      <remove invariant="System.Data.SQLite" />
      <add name="SQLite Data Provider" invariant="System.Data.SQLite" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for SQLite"
           type="System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteFactory, System.Data.SQLite" />
    </DbProviderFactories>
  </system.data>

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="myDatabase" connectionString="Data Source=C:\DB\mydatabase.db3" providerName="System.Data.SQLite"/>
  </connectionStrings>

And my code looks like:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using SubSonic.Repository;

namespace SubSonicSqliteTestConsole
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var repo = new SimpleRepository("myDatabase", SimpleRepositoryOptions.RunMigrations);
        }
    }
}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I am using SubSonic 3 with Visual Studio 2010 and SQLite 1.0.66 and it works. However there are a few things you have to do:

• Your application has to be x86 (not AnyCPU) or you get a BadImageFormatException on 64 bit machines
• You have to change the Target Framework from "Framework 4.0 Client Profile" to "Framework 4.0"

• You have to add (or modify) this to your app.config file. SQLite won't work without the useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy flag set to true

  <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
      <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/>
  </startup>
  

• My Factory initialisation code looks like this (it includes the Version and the PublicKeyToken). I got this settings from the machine.config file on my dev machine where I ran the setup and have choosen to integrate SQLite to Visual Studio 2010 (from the All Programs\SQLite folder). The file is located @ %WinDir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<FrameworkVersion>\CONFIG

  <system.data>
      <DbProviderFactories>
  
          <remove invariant="System.Data.SQLite" />
          <add name="SQLite Data Provider" invariant="System.Data.SQLite"
                     description=".Net Framework Data Provider for SQLite"
                     type="System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteFactory, System.Data.SQLite, Version=1.0.66.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=db937bc2d44ff139" />
  
      </DbProviderFactories>
  </system.data>
  

• My connection strings contains slashes instead of backslashes in the path and contains a version

  <connectionStrings>
      <add name="connectionstringname"
                 connectionString="Data Source=c:/temp/mydatabase.db;Version=3;"
                 providerName="System.Data.SQLite"/>
  </connectionStrings>
  

Hope that helps.

Update: I see you use a x64 version of SQLite, so forget about the first hint. But I leave it, maybe it is helpful for others.

Answer 2

If I remember correctly, the "The type initializer for ... threw an exception" error message usually means that something in the static constructor for the type threw an exception. You might want to try opening System.Data.SQLite.SQLiteFactory in Reflector or dotPeek or JustDecompile or whatever tool you prefer, and see what its static constructor (.cctor) is doing. Do you have ti using .NET 4 in VS2010 and .NET 2/3 in VS2008? That might be part of the issue too.