I have a Visual Studio 2019 (16.4.2) solution with several projects and hundreds of subfolders that sometimes have files on disk that need to be "Included" in the projects. This most often occurs after Nuget upgrades of 3rd party CSS and JS libraries, but this may also include image and icon libraries that have been imported.
The most common occurrence is when a 3rd party library is upgraded via Nuget, it'll add new css, js, images, or other content files to disk (sometimes more than 100 new files in a single upgrade). But since I don't know they're there, after I deploy the upgrade via Devops, none of those new files will get deployed, which causes all sorts of obvious problems. Then I have to go back and open every folder and subfolder, manually locate the missing files, click "Include in Project" for each one, then re-deploy.
There has to be a better way.
I don't necessarily want to include all missing files, because there are some files--especially source control-related files--that should not be included in the projects and need to just be left on disk. So what I need is a way to see a list of all of the files that are on disk but not included in the projects, so I can choose which ones to include.
Also nice would be a warning by Nuget about new files being added, which is probably asking too much (even though this is a very obvious feature that Nuget should include without asking for it).
How do I see all of the “missing” files in a Visual Studio solution
that need to be included in the projects?
Usually, you can click the menu Show All Files from the solution explorer(Before that, you need to click on the specific item to see the hidden file). In this way, you should check every project and select which part to import based on your need.
So what I need is a way to see a list of all of the files that are on
disk but not included in the projects, so I can choose which ones to
include.
I am afraid that you cannot get what you want so far.
In VS IDE, there is no such function to obtain a list of all exclude files in your solution and then select which to import by default.
Also, there is no such vs extension to implement it.
So you should check every project and manually select the file to import by Show All Files Button.
Suggestion
If you still want this feature in VS IDE, you could suggest a feature on our User Voice Forum.
After that, you can share the link here with us and anyone who is interested in it including us will vote it to get more Microsoft's attention.
Related
We have a web project with Angular, jquery and Telerik Kendo.
When searching for any text Ctrl+Shift+F that is then found in any of their *.min.js or *.js.map files, the VS (both 2013 and now 2015) will become unresponsive for 30-60s. Also when later I scroll the Find Result 1 window, it will momentarily become unresponsive when long line becomes visible. Everything becomes smooth again if I clear the search results from Find Result 1.
We have the *.min.js and *.js.map files included in project itself. Is this wrong approach?
This is a well known problem, the Connect feedback article is here. These files are poison pills to an IDE, compare to this Q+A.
Little to add, beyond not adding them to your project, the proposed workaround in the article is the obvious one. And as long as you need to search through these files you surely want to work with the non-minimized versions of them.
In the Find options, expand "Result options" (Alt+S) and enable "Display file names only". The contents of the files will not be displayed in the find results and everything will be a lot faster. You can still double click a file name in the find results to go to the exact location of the match in that file.
Does this problem happen for everyone, or only on particular machines? Are there any Visual Studio extensions that may be slowing down the search? You could try and temporarily disable all extensions and see if you have the same problem.
Otherwise, I would agree that including the .min.js and .map files in the solution / project is not ideal anyway.
My recommendation is to use Bower to manage your 3rd party client-side library dependencies. They say use the right tool for the job, and in this case, it's currently Bower.
Bower support is baked in to Visual Studio 2015. Here's some Microsoft docs on using Bower in Visual Studio 2015:
http://docs.asp.net/en/latest/client-side/bower.html
Docs for installing Kendo using Bower: http://docs.telerik.com/kendo-ui/install/bower
Now, this by default will put those vendor libraries in a bower_components folder under the project root. You would then not include this folder in your project, or in source control (but bower.json and optional .bowerrc would go into source control).
This should alleviate your problem in VS2013, but in 2015, Find in Files will still search bower_components. So your best bet is to try and narrow down the source of the slow-down.
Using Bower potentially impacts your development and build process, so you might want to avoid that if that's going to force your hand to make other changes you're not positioned for yet.
One thing you can check to try and help solve this issues, is in your gruntfile's minify task, make sure the mangle property is set to false. Mangle changes the variable names to really short names, so sometimes that can mess up your other files that use variables from those minified files, and other errors can occur. I'm not sure why visual studio crashes or wouldn't be able to handle searching for a string that doesn't exist, but it's something to consider.
I have a C# solution I created within Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate that contains multiple projects that make use of the same structures, classes, and enumerated types. I have created a .cs file that contains all of these items, but at the moment I have to make a duplicate of this file for each project. This is obviously less than ideal because I have to remember to update each copy of the file should I make a change or addition.
Is there are way I can have all of the projects reference just one actual copy of this file, so that I only have to update it once and all of the other projects can see this update? A colleague of mine told me it was possible to make some sort of "symbolic" reference in TFS, but since I don't really know what the name of this feature is I don't know how to research it further.
This question has answers that suggest either creating a class library or using "Add as link" when adding an existing item. I suppose I can do this in Visual Studio when not using TFS, but I have posed this as a TFS-specific question. Will this "add as link" option work when TFS is in use or do I have to do something in TFS to get it to honor the link reference?
"Add link" option would definitely work with TFS. You dont have to do anything specific for that. "Add Link" is project specific and it will add a new entry to your project file specifying the location of your .CS file. As long as the file is available in the particular location during server build, there is nothing to worry. Make sure that the Add link makes a relative path to the file and not absolute.
In my company, we have multiple projects within a solution and we share a single "Assemblyversion.cs" for all the projects so that I dont need to write version info in multiple files. We have made use of Add Link and it works great!
I've got a solution in which I'm trying to create a 2nd executable. These two executable share most of the same files, but have a few different ones including resources and application icon, etc.
I created the 2nd project, and added the items as links.:
Right-click "Add existing item",
Browse to it,
Click the "Add" drop-down and select "Add as link".
Adding as links means that it just references the other file in the other folder and does not copy it.
Now, when I tried to commit my project VisualSVN / SVN tried to do an SVN add on those files in the logical path they belong to resulting in lots of errors that the file was not found. It caused the entire commit to fail and was a major pain in the ass.
Is there a good way I can add links to files without side-effects? All the files I'm trying to link to are already in the same repo.
Update
Maybe I should add more information about what I'm trying to accomplish because I'm open to any suggestion which helps me accomplish it.
I have a project structure something like this... Or I want it to be like this...
MyProject
/Common
BusinessDataObjects (svn:external)
ControlsLibrary (svn:external)
OtherCommmonLib1 (svn:external)
OtherCommonLib2 (svn:external)
/Modules
Module1
Module2
Module3
...
Application1
Application2 (shares all App1's files, except different .resx, icon, name, other minor differences)
SetupProject1 (includes app1 and certain module dlls)
SetupProject2 (includes app2 and certain module dlls)
The application is basically an empty shell (using Prism) which loads the modules installed in a /modules folder. I want both applications to be almost identical, but I want them to have different names and a different icon. I thought I could accomplish this by adding the files from the first project to the second as a link, and simply swapping a resource file which included the strings for the application window title, About dialog, etc. But then VisualSVN or whatever tried to SVN Add those items which I wasn't expecting.
I need to be able to develop the modules and the application's shell project. They are not stable in any way yet. I just want them to near copies of each other but with minor naming differences. I figured with two application projects, I could have two setup projects that included the output from each application and whichever modules are supposed to be included in that version of the software program.
I was trying to make this as foolproof as possible, and I'd like to avoid having to update external references to the same project. (I'm a bit confused about that as well, would I svn:external to the same repo?) That doesn't sound good, but this was my main idea on how to create two almost identical apps. I'm not sure how else I'll do it if I can't get my version control software to behave.
I had suggested oringally we only have one version of the software and have certain modules be upgrades, but there are some good reasons they can't really do that.
When you add a file to a Visual Studio project with "Add as link" it's expected that the file is not copied to the project's folder.
VisualSVN considers status of items in your working copy, even files which are not included in the current solution. However a linked file does not exist in a working copy, thus can't be tracked. It's out of version-control.
Since the files you attempt to link are already version-controlled (i.e. they exist in the SVN repository) it makes sense to use Externals Definitions (svn:externals property) to link them.
Also see TortoiseSVN Manual; it's description of svn:externals is really good.
You don't mention your environment. However, you mention you have a Solution. I'm assuming it's VisualStudio you're using.
Have you tried AnkhSVN which is a Source Control Provider for Subversion for VisualStudio? AnknSVN integrates into VisualStudio much like Microsoft's native version control systems of Visual SourceSafe and TeamFoundation. I believe you can use AnknSVN to do the linking you want since these links are really internal VisualStudio structures and not actual symbolic or hard links like you find in a Unix system.
I usually avoid links (I believe they're called Junctions on Windows) because they simply don't work across operating systems. Instead, you can use one of the following methods:
Use your build system to copy the files, or create the required links rather than your version control system.
Use svn:externals to do the linking. Careful with this because svn:externals are pointers to a Subversion URL.
For example, if I setup http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj1 to have a svn:externals link to the head of http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj2, and I create a tag for Project 1 by copying http://foo.com/svn/trunk/proj1 to http://foo.com/svn/tags/REL-1.2/proj1, that project is still pointing to the head of the trunk of proj2. Changes in Project 2 will change what I thought was a stable tag. Always point your svn:external to a stable revision.
I have no experience with VisualSVN, we use Ankhsvn which does not have that problem.
http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
I could use some advice.
I'm in the process of adopting subversion, and I'm trying to put some existing Visual Studio 2010 projects into a repository. I have the current version of AhnkSvn.
The projects I have are organised as;
VS2010_projects\Project_A
VS2010_projects\Project_B
VS2010_projects\Project_C
VS2010_projects\Common_code
Where Project_A, Project_B and Project_C may all refer to one or more files in "Common_Code"
In visual studio, these files will have been added using "add as link".
There is no actual project in "Common_code" just a collection of useful code files, which we're likely to re-use in different projects.
(If we have a module or class which is re-used in various projects, then we often keep a single master copy in 'common-code', and link to it.)
Visual Studio has no problem with this.
When I add any of the actual projects to subversion, all of their own files are added just fine, but the linked files are ignored.
(And as a consequence, if I then get a working copy of those files, then it's just the project files which get handled, I won't get a copy of the linked files.)
If I right click on any of the linked files, I the only subversion options I get are to refresh their status or to select the working folder.
I was wondering what the correct way to handle this situation was ?
Any advice would be much appreciated
Thanks !
Robert
if I understand your question correctly then I think SVN is acting in the desired way. A linked file is merely a reference to another file. That reference exists only in the .csproj file which is checked in. It would not make sense to have two copies of the same file in source control, and it could lead to versioning issues. The first time you checkout your repository doing a build on your projects should copy the files from Common_code to the places that they're linked.
As an aside we've had alot of random issues with .csproj linked files and SVN, and so try to avoid linked files where possible. A better way to re-use files across projects is obviously just to embed them in a library and then reference that library. This should work fine with the exception of certain files like Javascript/CSS.
Also you may want to check out SVN externals, a workmate mentioned this can be used to share common libraries between multiple projects, although as a disclaimer I haven't tried this myself and can't comment on the merits or drawbacks of the approach.
Thanks for the advice, I actually did something similar to your suggestion.
I didn't want to make a full blown library, but I did make up a dummy project, and put my shared files into that.
Then I added the dummy project to the repository.
AhnkSvn now seems to be satisfied that the linked files are under subversion control, and seems to handle them just fine.
(I haven't added any reference to the dummy project to my existing projects - they just use the linked files as before - but now AhnkSvn shows me their status, and allows me to get the latest version, and commit changes.)
I can see the case for having a proper library - but that would have meant modifying a large body of existing projects. This approach lets me get up and running with Subversion without requiring those changes first.
Being new to VS, how may I think of these two concepts, what is the difference?
I find some missing information in the other answers (at least for people who come from other IDEs like, say, Eclipse) . To say that a solution is a container for projects is only part of the thing. The conceptual feature of a VS project (what determines its 'granularity') is that one project produces one output: typically an executable or a library (dll). So, if you are going to code three executables that uses related code, you'll create one solution and at least three projects - probably more.
A solution is a container for projects, and tracks dependencies between projects.
Just to come up with a metaphor..
A solution is like a house, a project like a room. Each room provides a piece of functionality whereas the house, a container of rooms, provides the means to link the rooms together and organize them appropriately.
Kind of corny but I made it up on the fly, so bear with me :)
It doesn't help that Visual Studio seems to make things more confusing. "New Project" actually creates a new SOLUTION containing a project. "Open Project" actually opens a solution containing one (or many) project. (The file menu says "Open Project/Solution" but it really is opening solutions. There is no "Close Project" only "Close Solution" which is accurate.
So, in VS you are always working within a solution. Many solutions contain only one project and newer developers are likely to think of them as the same thing. However you can add other projects into a solution.
In case anyone decides to scroll down this far... I thought the MS docs did a pretty good job at describing the differences. I've copy pasted (and rephrased) the relevant bits here:
When you create an app, application, website, Web App, script, plug-in, etc in Visual Studio, you start with a project. In a logical sense, a project contains of all the source code files, icons, images, data files and anything else that will be compiled into an executable program or web site, or else is needed in order to perform the compilation. A project also contains all the compiler settings and other configuration files that might be needed by various services or components that your program will communicate with.
You don't have to use solutions or projects if you don't want to. You can simply open the files in Visual Studio and start editing your code.
In a literal sense, a project is an XML file (.vbproj, .csproj, .vcxproj) that defines a virtual folder hierarchy along with paths to all the items it "contains" and all the build settings.
In Visual Studio, the project file is used by Solution Explorer to display the project contents and settings. When you compile your project, the MSBuild engine consumes the project file to create the executable. You can also customize projects to product other kinds of output.
A project is contained, in a logical sense and in the file system, within a solution, which may contain one or more projects, along with build information, Visual Studio window settings, and any miscellaneous files that aren't associated with any project. In a literal sense, the solution is a text file with its own unique format; it is generally not intended to be edited by hand.
A solution has an associated .suo file that stores settings, preferences and configuration information for each user that has worked on the project.
A Solution can have many Projects.
The Solution can also handle managing the dependencies between its different Projects...making sure that each Project gets Built in the appropriate order for the final Solution to work.
A project contains executable and library files that make up an application or component of an application.
A solution is a placeholder for logically related projects that make up an application. For example, you could have separate projects for your application's GUI, database access layer, and so on. The projects would be specific divisions for your program's functionality, and the solution would be the umbrella unifying all of them under one application.
A solution is a readable text file whose extension is .sln and having a structured content that describes the projects that it contains. A project is a readable XML formatted text file whose extension is .vcxproj and having a structured content according to its XML schema, and whose primary purpose is to contain the listing of source codes filenames and their dependencies or references to other project's source codes as well.
Solutions are containers for projects - you can also use them to organize items that are used across different related project (shared dll's and such).
Solutions are containers used by Visual Studio to organize one or more related projects. When you open a solution in Visual Studio, it will automatically load all the projects it contains.
When you create a new project in Visual Studio, it automatically creates a solution to house the project if there's not a solution already open.
You can set dependencies of projects on other projects in the solution. The dependent project is build after the project it is depending on is built.
For more details refer - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/quickstart-projects-solutions
If you are from an Eclipse background you would probably go to build path of a project and add a dependency on other project or add an external jar. In VS you can do that in a single container called solution where all related projects are grouped together.
Eg. Let's say you are build and android and iOS app in xamrin, there would be some common code and resources that could go in a separate project and then your android and iOS projects can depend on this common code project. Also you could have projects to test these projects etc.