How to debug a project file in MSBuild 12.0 / VS2013? has an answer, but apparently that method is not supported in Visual Studio 2015/MSBuild 14. Does anyone know a way to perform MSBuild debugging in Visual Studio 2015/MSBuild 14? Bonus points for scoop about Visual Studio 2017.
The MSBuild debugger was never officially supported and was cut from MSBuild in favor of cross-platform support in the VS 2015/MSBuild 14 timeframe.
There are many ways to debug the behavior of a build. The combination of a Verbosity=Diagnostic build log and the preprocessed project (msbuild /pp:preprocessed.xml path\to\the.csproj creates a file containing all of the build logic for a given project) is extremely powerful. You may also be interested in the UI that the MSBuildStructuredLog provides, which helps pare down the massive output produced by a diagnostic log.
It really works well in old VS version:
But if I use the VS2015, I got the same issue as yours, it could recognize the /debug command line.
I report this issue to the product team here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedbackdetail/view/3120913/how-to-debug-a-project-file-in-msbuild-14-0-vs2015
You could check the latest update from it, of course, please also vote and add your comment there:)
I've had a problem with my Windows 7 after an update, neither Safe Mode nor Recovery Mode could resolve the problem. I was forced to reinstall Windows completely. To develop on my projects I need Visual Studio 2010.
I always had ReSharper installed and got used to its features, so I installed it aswell.
Everything setup I tried building my solution but encountered a problem ...
(The underlined file can be found here: https://up.zone/aj)
After hours of trying to resolve the problems, I figgured out that ReSharper was the problem. I can build the solution perfectly fine without ReSharper installed. Having it installed, even if all features are turned off and the services are suspended, causes these errors in the picture above to show on build.
I managed to resolve two out of three errors by following the instructions of this Reddit user on his post: https://up.zone/ag
Now I am left with one more exception I cannot figgure out how to resolve. I couldn't really find anything helpful googling, which means you guys are my last hope. I really do not want to go back to developing without ReSharper.
This is the one:
Any idea?
Thank you!
Update 1
I figgured out that the problem must be in the NuGet.targets file, located in the .nuget folder in our solution.
I managed to find a workaround following the suggestion of this post, I am now able to build the solution without any errors.
To summarize, remove this line out of your *.csproj file
<Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\.nuget\nuget.targets" />
Although this works, I don't think this can be the solution. This line is there for a reason I assume. Anybody with a deep understanding of NuGet who might know how to properly resolve this problem?
Update 2
I found out that as soon as you reload your solution/project, the line gets added once again. Also, if you have certain dependencies nuget should download for you - it won't, because the line which makes that call and handles this got removed.
I'm now at a point where I know where the problem is but not why it is caused.
Does ReSharper change anything in the way NuGet behaves? As far as I can tell, nothing gets added or removed to or from the NuGet.targets file due to ReSharper.
There were one more report on this topic, at https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/RSRP-462271 .
The best guess so far is that this is caused by two things happening at once: (a) using MSBuild tasks in C# source code form inside MSBuild XML files rather than DLLs and (b) having some of the MSBuild opensource DLLs shipped with the latest version of ReSharper for its own project file handling needs.
The source code gets compiled into a task DLL during an MSBuild run (not a much common thing to have; Roslyn would do this rather than ship a DLL? seriously?). When building from within Visual Studio (rather than with msbuild.exe), the in-process MSBuild instance is used, and it would run in the same appdomain as ReSharper, so it uses the common assembly reference resoluiton. If it's not too accurate, then it might accidentally pick the wrong DLL version by the short name, which would break the task compilation (that's a separate error, maybe cached away) and then result in the task-not-found error later at runtime (SetEnvironmentVariable task not found in here case).
I've tested on sample solutions with source code based tasks and could not get it broken. So trivial cases are OK. Never heard back from the original issue reporter, so there was no further progress.
Now I've got a hint that this is Visual Studio 10 (any other VS versions installed on that machine?) and maaaaybe it's Roslyn tasks. We might know for sure if you run MSBuild with more detailed logs (by setting the logging options at Tools | Options | Projects and Solutions | Build and Run | MSBuild project build output verbosity to at least Detailed) and building just the faulty project.
I'll also try this out with VS10 and update this reply with new data.
I just wondered if it possible within various Visual Studio versions to automatically remove all references from a project that were never been used?
In your answer, please specify which version of VS the solution applies to.
If you have Resharper (plugin) installed, you can access a feature that allows you to analyze used references via Solution Explorer > (right click) References > Optimize References...
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/webhelp/Refactorings__Remove_Unused_References.html
This feature does not correctly handle:
Dependency injected assemblies
Dynamically loaded assemblies (Assembly.LoadFile)
Native code assemblies loaded through interop
ActiveX controls (COM interop)
Other creative ways of loading assemblies
All you need is stone and bare knuckle then you can do it like a caveman.
Remove unused namespaces (for each class)
Run Debug build
Copy your executable and remaining namespace references to new location
Run the executable
Missing Reference DLL error will occur
Copy required DLL from Debug folder
Repeat 4-6
Gu Gu Ga Ga?
Throw your stone
You can also rely on your build tools to let you know which reference is still required. It's the era of VS 2017, caveman still survived.
The Resharper extension will do this for you.
This extension supports Visual Studio 2005 through 2017.
While the compiler won't include unused assemblies, extraneous using statements and references slows down Visual Studio and Intellisense, since there's more code the tools have to consider.
You can try the free VS2010 extension: Reference Assistant by Lardite group. It works perfectly for me. This tool helps to find unused references and allows you to choose which references should be removed.
In a Visual Basic project there is support to remove "Unused References" (Project-->References-->Unused References). In C# there isn´t such a function.
The only way to do it in a C# project (without other tools) is to remove possible unused assemblies, compile the project and verify if any errors occur during compilation. If none errors occur you have removed a unused assembly. (See my post)
If you want to know which project (assembly) depends on other assemblies you can use NDepend.
With Visual Studio versions 2017 and 2015, you can do this with the Code Map feature, but this feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition, not the Community or Professional versions.
Right-click on the project node in the solution explorer and select 'Show on Code Map.' This will display your .dll as a single node in a blank graph. Right-click on that node in the Code Map and select "Show Assemblies This References." This will add an additional node called "Externals" which can be expanded to show only the assemblies that are actually referenced.
For Visual Studio 2013/2015/2017 there is an extension that does exactly what you want: ResolveUR. What this basically does is:
reference is removed in the project
project is compiled with msbuild
check for build errors
restore removed references if there were build errors.
For anybody coming here looking for Visual studio 2012:
Download and Install Reference Assistant for Visual Studio 11
Later you can do:
In Visual Studio 2013 this extension works:
ResolveUR
Some people suggested to use an awesome tool - Reference Assistant for Visual Studio. The problem is that VS2012 is the latest supported Visual Studio. But there is the way to make it work in VS2013 as well ;)
And here is how:
1) Download Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix
2) Change the extension to zip: Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix -> Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.zip
3) Unzip and open the extension.vsixmanifest file in the text editor
4) Find all occurences of InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0)" and replace them with InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0]" (note the closing bracket)
5) Save the file and zip all files so they are on the root zip level
6) Change the extension of the new zip to vsix
7) Install and enjoy :)
I've tested it with VS2013, thanks source for the tutorial
EDIT
Add to support VS 2015 Community Edition
<InstallationTarget Version="[14.0,15.0]" Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" />
Meaning of the brackets
[ – minimum version inclusive.
] – maximum version inclusive.
( – minimum version exclusive.
) – maximum version exclusive.
[Update] This feature is only available for .Net core projects.
This feature will be coming to Visual Studio 2019 very soon and already available with Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 Preview 1.
This option is turned off by default, but you can enable it under menu Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Advanced. Select the Remove Unused References command in Solution Explorer (Experimental). Once the option is enabled, the Remove Unused References command will appear in the right-click menu of a project name or dependencies node.
You can use Reference Assistant extension from the Visual Studio extension gallery.
Used and works for Visual Studio 2010.
In the VS2022 (preview at the moment of writing) this comes out of the box for SDK Style Projects (read: .NET Core and newer).
If it is available you can find it in the project context menu:
You get to choose what to do with each finding.
Read more about it here.
Pro-tip: Check if your project compiles and runs correctly after applying this. In my experience it doesn't check whether a dependency is used at runtime, for instance.
Using DevExpress, I follow these instructions:
In VS, go to DevExpress - Editor - Code Cleanup. Under Rules, check 'Remove unused namespace references'. Click OK.
Right-click on the solution, and choose 'Code Cleanup'. The cleanup runs for a few minutes, and finishes.
Build your application
The following method does not depend on any 'add-on's and is not very painful.
Step through each of your source files and
Select all (Ctrl-A)
Toggle outline expansion (Ctrl-M, M). This will reduce the file to two lines.
Click on the namespace's '+'. This will show each of the file's classes as a single line. Scan each class's reference count, looking for unreferenced classes.
Click on each of the classes' '+'. This will show each of the class functions as a single line. Scan each function's reference count, looking for unreferenced functions.
Scanning each file looking for '0 reference' takes only a second.
Scanning an entire project takes only a couple of minutes.
In VB2008, it works this way:
Project>Add References
Then click on the Recent tab where you can see list of references used recently. Locate the one you do not want and delet it. Then you close without adding anything.
Within a Visual Studio (2005/2008) Project I'd like to use an open source library. I'd like to link to the binaries so that I'm not responsible for a proper build and can check those binaries into the source control server (SVN).
So far so good, but if I'd like to debug into the open source library or want to take a look at a class implementation I would be forced to add the the source of the project into my solution and than link my project to the source instead of the binaries.
Is it possible to tell Visual Studio a location of the source of a linked binary library so that things like "go to definition" and debug is working?
Absolutely, if you have the pdb symbols its all done for you - look at MFC for example, you get the binaries yet can debug through the source.
If you don't have the symbols, then its a lot more complicated, when you debug through the code it may ask you to show it the source lines, and you'll just have to find them for it (usually the path is the same so its easy).
There are multiple ways you can achieve this.
Like gbjbaanb suggested you can use pdb symbols. It's going to work for both managed an unmanaged code.
If you're using .NET you can debug with Reflector. Oran Dennison wrote how to debug with Reflector and Visual Studio. One of my favorite tools is TestDriven.NET. Author of this tool, Jamie Cansale, also blogged about how to debug with Reflector when you have TestDriven.NET. In his article, Jamie has a link to screencast where he demonstrates how to do it step by step.
Last, if you use for your SVN client like TortoiseSVN, you can add files/directories from check in. More details how to Ignore Files and Directories with TortoiseSVN.
Anyone know of a way to create Visual Studio Projects from a build based on Jamfiles?
I'd settle for a jamfile -> XML-or-some-other-intermediate-format exporter tool, so I could write my own.
This jam distribution has a tool that does that:
http://redmine.jamplex.org/
See here:
http://redmine.jamplex.org/git/jamplus/docs/html/jamtoworkspace.html
Haven't used any of it myself yet, so I'm afraid I can't say anything about how well it works.
You might also consider CMake. CMake files are about as easy to write as Jamfiles, and CMake can generate projects for Visual Studio, Xcode, and Unix Makefiles automatically. I used to use Jam for all my Linux projects, but once I discovered CMake, I haven't gone back.
JamPlus has a built-in workspace generator that reads a project's Jamfiles and exports an IDE workspace.
http://jamplus.org/git/jamplus/docs/html/jamtoworkspace.html