Can't delete files from visual studio project - visual-studio

Whenever I try to delete (or even exclude) any file from my VS2015 C++ project, I get the following message:
File '...' cannot be removed. The most likely reason is that the file is under source code control and cannot be removed at this time.
Trying to search for this error message gives no results anywhere - am I the only one that has ever got it?
I use perforce, and all the files are checked out, so VS should not know anything about version control.
The only solution I can find is to remove the files from vcxproj file manually, which is very tedious.
Update: the problem seems to be with Perforce plugin. Disabling it allows me to remove files again. This is strange, because I never configured it for this specific project. I also tried to switch source control to None, but it kept resetting every time I restart VS.

I just ran into this issue with Visual Studio 2017. I did some pretty extensive troubleshooting, and found a workaround:
Open the solution/project for which you are seeing this problem.
Open a connection to a perforce depot - even though your solution isn't supposed to be managed by Perforce - by using this option: File / Open Connection to a Perforce Depot...
You should see either a warning dialog or a warning line in the Output tab under Perforce Source Control that says something like "Solution is not under your client's root folder". If you don't see either, you should probably either move your entire solution somewhere that isn't in your client spec (if possible), or exclude the entire solution folder from your perforce client spec. That way, P4VS shouldn't automatically add files in that solution to Perforce.
Navigate to:
Tools / Options / Source Control / Perforce - General
...and uncheck this option to suppress the annoying warning dialog from step 3 that would otherwise appear every time you open that solution:
Warn if solution is outside workspace root
Now, you should be able to remove files again without P4VS interfering. (Fair warning: This workaround may have other side effects that I don't know about, but it has worked for me so far.)

Nothing worked for me so I just opened the project file in a text editor and manually removed the offending files. At some point my build target had changed as well, so a possible reason for this happening was I was trying to remove the files while a different build target was selected to when they were added.

Related

VSTS source control bindings invalid after replacing directory with a backup

I changed a lot of files in one of my ASP.NET Solutions and checked-in. Afterwards I realized I wanted to role back to my original files. I am aware I could have just went to Source Control explorer and rolled back the changeset but I went about it wrong. Since I took a backup of my entire project directory prior to doing this I figured it would be easy to simply just replace the directory with my backed up files.
After replacing the entire directory with the backup and When I open the solution I get the following message:
One or more source control bindings for this solution are not valid
and are listed below. Source control bindings can be modified by
selecting File, Source Control, Advanced, Change Source Control from
the main menu.
Then all of the .csproj files are listed below.
I followed the instructions that I saw on many websites saying unbind then rebind and it is not doing anything for me.
My first question is why did this happen if it is the same exact set of files that have all of the source control bindings.
My second question is how can I go about getting this backed up solution in source control again?
I expect it to be in source control showing me the pending changes so that when I check-in the latest version in source control will be my replacement version.
Unlike windows file system, you shouldn't simply copy and past the backup files. It will definitely cause source control binding conflicts as you encountered.
You should use rollback entire changeset feature. This will influence your source control in TFS. If you roll back a file to an earlier version, tfs will eliminating the effect of all changesets that occurred after that version. More details please take a look at this tutorial: Roll back changesets
Since you just need to go back the old version files, you could now roll back your changesets to the one you back up the entire project. Check in the roll back operation.
Another way is as below if unbind/re-bind the project is not work:
Unbind project in Change Source Control
Unload project in Solution Explorer
Reload project in Solution Explorer
Note: If you use above option, the TFS consider all project files as newly added files to the solution.

Getting a "vspscc could not be found in your workspace, or you do not have permission to access it" error

Today, while trying to publish an app so I could test it, I suddenly got this error message:
The item
D:\ScratchSrc\TryNewReportViewer2017\TryNewReportViewer2017\TryNewReportViewer2017.csproj.vspscc
could not be found in your workspace, or you do not have permission to
access it.
That's a mystery to me, as I've never gotten this before and I was working with this app just last week. Publishing it, too.
I've looked for the .vspscc file. Found it exactly where it said it should be. So, the alternative is that I don't have permissions to it. I don't understand why I shouldn't have permissions to a file on my machine that I created, but whatever. So, how do I get permissions to my own file?
I'm working with VS 2017, TFS 2015 on premise.
This issue may due to the wrong source control binding for that specific xx.vspscc file.
Double check your source control bindings for that file in TFS. You could also try to unbind and rebind the file.
Then delete the file in local(back up local changes first) and get latest version from TFS. Finally do the publish again.
If above solution is still not working, try to delete local workspace and create a new one, get latest version of the file, modify the file with local changes (if you have) in your backup , check in the file, then do the publish .
Another reason for this problem is, that the vspscc file is not checked in.
Just do a "Compare" on the project folder to see, if it's missing.
If the csproj.vspscc is missing you can create a new one by removing the project in visual studio and adding it back
I was able to 'fix' the problem by going to the source control explorer, selecting the smproj file (which was checked out for editing), and checked it in by itself. Then, I checked in the Model.bim. Was able to do both of these things without getting the error.
I also tried all the usual things, deleting the entire solution directory, getting it from TFS again but nothing worked.
Noticed the version of Visual Studio 2019 was a few months old so upgraded to the latest. That fixed it!

Visual Studio keeps running the old build

I have a simple Silverlight program that displays a bunch of images. I modified it do display more images, but it when I hit "run without debugging" is keeps running the old build with fewer images. When I copy the code into a new project and run it, it works fine for the first time, but then each subsequent change is not displayed. What could be the problem? I'm using Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.
Always check "Configuration Manager" option on "Build" menu in Microsoft Visual Web Developer. The checkBox "build" has to be checked, otherwise it won't build.
Happened to me, I hope this helps others.
I just had this happen to me in VS 2013 for Web. Had to change the Project URL in:
"Project properties"
 "Web" tab
  "Servers"
To a different localhost number and recreate Virtual directory.
Before my Project URL was:
http://localhost:55487/
I changed it to:
http://localhost:55488/
Then clicked "Create Virtual Directory".
Would like to know why this happened in the first place.
I found that I had to close all open instances of Visual Studio before I got it working again
This happens because your cache memory is full. just go to you bin and obj folder and delete all the temporary files. Now it will run properly.
Maybe it's a caching issue (webbrowser / proxy).
To fool the browser try to embed the xap file with an additional parameter that changes every time you open the plugin:
<param name="source" value="ClientBin/BubuApp.xap?<%=Guid.NewGuid().ToString() %>"/>
If this don't help, try to clean the project (delete obj / bin folders & xap file).
I was also suffering from this issue and none of the suggestions worked. I was building a Office.js add-in and debugging was with IIS Express.
What fixed the issue for me was deleting files in
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\Temporary ASP.NET
Actually, I went ahead and and deleted the entire C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp folder out of spite :)
I also had this issue and while some of the fixes above helped temporarily, the one that worked for me was to remove the history and caching in Internet Options.
Go into Internet Option (also available in VS via Tools > options > Environment > Web Browser > Internet Explorer Options).
On the General tab click Settings in the Browsing History section.
On the Temporary Internet Files page select Every time I start
Internet Explorer
On the History tab set the Days to keep history to 0
On the Caches and Database tab make sure Allow website caches and
databases is NOT ticked.
I'm not sure if all of the above are required, but I've made a number of changes to files and so far they have been reflected straight away in the dynamic versions without any noticeable performance problems.
I've also since realised if I set 'Every time I visit the webpage' instead of 'Every time I start Internet Explorer' I don't have to stop and restart the project to see the changes. Which is how it should be!
I used to suffer this. All of this used to be (for me) a folder's contents issue.
Maybe you can check this:
Delete %windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0xxx\Temporary
IIS Express: even if you change the output file for compiled results, you will see in applicationhost.config that many times IISExpress is really "looking" to the default bin folder of your project.
It is even possible that you have different configurations for Debug or Release, so maybe IIS is looking BIN with Release code, and you are now compiling in Debug to another folder, do you understand me?
Happened to me too. Well i dont know the exact reason for this behavior. But when i close the visual C express 10 and then open again and build it builds the new saved file. I guess it still hangs on to the old file when there is an error in some debug mode or something.
Stop all incntance of VS.
Delete all /bin, not just /bin/Debug. All /bin
Remove user option .suo file in solution dir. It will create on self.
Remove all restore windows point
Stop IIS.
6 Start IIS after 1 minutes.
Rebuild solution, Buid projects
It happing on me too. Very nasty. You may restart your computer.
Check for global asembly dll.
Just delete folder 'Release' in project with old code build.
I had the same problem and none of the answers were working for me. It turns out that building the ASP.Net project did not build the Silverlight project, so running without debugging didn't update the Silverlight.
Fix: Right click the Asp.Net project. Build Dependencies > Project Dependencies. Check the Silverlight project. Now building should work.
If this is a web application, change the Project URL with a new port number.
Example :
Change from http://localhost:3688/
To http://localhost:36881/
To do this:
Navigate to Project properties -> Web
Change the URL
Hit "Create Virtual Directory"
Finally, Build and RUN
I had this issue in a web site.
The site referenced 1 of the projects in the solution, and changes to it would not reflect in the debug.
Issue was a third project was referencing an outdated dll of the same same referenced project.
I removed the project and all references in other projects and readded and re-referenced everything and it worked fine.
Check you haven't got two versions of whichever file you're updating (one for one group of users, one for a different group of users).
In my case(VS 2015) it was because of the missing dll in the .exe directory... I made a "clean solution", then additionally deleted all bin and obj folders' contents. Reason to do so was VS keeping to load old dll build. Solution was to select folder of the running debug config, i.e. everytime I rebuild project destination location with dll and a reference to it stays with warning mark for some time until intellitrace does its job. After doing the setup mentioned above, I still have to do a manual rebuild on a project that generates a dll into specified dir. Pressing F5 does nothing, I don't have time to find out why... Main thing is its working for me
I had this recently too and I didn't see the answer here. I was changing an MMI to get rid of redundant buttons, and they didn't go away.
Really old legacy code. To make it keep user settings - like language - someone had made it keep the Settings. I was not allowed to change this, they want it like that.
To get rid of the old settings and allow new ones:
open regedit
navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER - Software - MyProject - SubProject
here you see Recent File List and Settings.
Delete Settings completely - don't worry, it will make a new one.
Please check is there any old .tlb file present in someother folder. In my case i was using the .tlb file generated using .NET dll and then created the .tlb file using RegAsm. I tried to use the .tlb file in vb6 code, it still refers old code only. After a long search i found same .tlb file older version found in Visual Studio\VB98 folder. I removed it then it worked fine. This may not be relevent for this issue but could give you another way of thinking
There is a scroll bar at the top which has 3 options:
debug
release
configuration manager
Make sure release is selected.
I had to clear browsing data and it worked in my case

TFS & Visual Studio integration - Get Latest does not always work?

I'm developing in Visual Studio 2005, using TFS as the source control. Whenever I haven't been working on the solution for a while, I always do a recursive Get Latest in Solution Explorer.
However, this doesn't always seem to work. If I know I don't have the latest version of a file, even right-clicking this (in Solution Explorer), choosing Get Specific Version and ticking the "Force get" box doesn't work.
I seem to need to open up the TFS Source Control window, and there force a Get of the file in question.
Also, the Solution Explorer often has the little "checked out to someone else" icon next to files, but when I check in Source Control, they're not checked out at all!
I'd just like to know if these problems are widespread, whether they persist in VS2008 (I haven't used TFS for a big project in 2008 yet), and if there are any fixes or workarounds.
1) I would not make a habit out of Get Latest from Solution Explorer. Even if it always worked 100% bug free, it is far slower and less reliable than doing it from the command line or Source Control Explorer. SlnExp has to crawl your whole project structure and issue non-recursive calls...pseudo algorithm:
parse sln file
foreach project in sln
TFS_GET makefile
parse makefile
enumerate sourcefiles[]
TFS_GET sourcefiles[]
loop
SCE requires no parsing and issues one single recursive webservice call. In addition to the performance gain, this is much safer:
(a) Build-time dependencies aren't always part of a project's file list. Executable tools, 3rd party assemblies, and deployment scripts are all common examples. SCE will download them, SlnExp won't.
(b) Scoping Get calls down to specific files won't yield the expected result when a file is renamed or moved. At best, the "old" name is deleted from disk; at worst, nothing appears to happen at all. (this may be the cause of the bug you reported) In order for a file to truly be renamed/moved in sync with the server, the old & new paths must both be inside the scope of the Get.
2) There have been many bug fixes to the SlnExp "glyphs" over the years. I won't claim that VS2008 SP1 is perfect in this regard but it is definitely improved.
Sometimes Get specific version even checking both checkboxes won't get you the latest file. Most commonly what happens is that you've made a change to a file, and you want to undo those changes by re-getting the latest version. Well... that's what Undo pending changes is for and not the purpose of Get specific version.
If in doubt:
undo pending check in on the file(s) before you do 'get latest'
do a compare afterwards to make sure your file matches the expected version
run a recursive 'compare' on your whole project afterwards to see what's different
keep an eye on pending changes window and sometimes you may need to check 'take server version' to resolve an incompatible pending change
And this one's my favorite that I just discovered :
check the Output window for messages such as this :
Warning - Unable to refresh R:\TFS-PROJECTS\www.example.com\ExampleMVC\Example MVC\Example MVC.csproj because you have a pending edit.
Yes this critical message appears in the output window. No other notifications!
Nothing in pending changes and no other dialog message telling you that the file you just requested explicitly was not retrieved! And yes - you resolve this by just running Undo pending changes and getting the file.

Why would VS2005 keep checking out a project for editing without any changes being made?

I have a VS2005 solution which contains a variety of projects (C++ DLLs, C++ static libraries, C# assemblies, C++ windows executables) that are combined in various ways to produce several executables. For some reason, every time I open the solution, VS2005 wants to check out one of the projects for editing. The project is not modified in any way, it's just checked out. If I configure VS2005 to prompt before checking out, I can cancel the auto-checkout during load with no ill effect that I can see. It may or may not be relevant, but the project it keeps checking out is cppunit version 1.12.0 (the static lib version). How can I stop this annoying behavior?
Other potentially relevant (or not) details:
Source control is Team Foundation Server (not Visual SourceSafe)
no .suo or .ncb files are checked in
the .vcproj and .vspscc files are being checked out
When I close the solution or shut down Visual Studio, I'm asked whether I want to save changes to the project. Answering yes results in no changes to the file (Kdiff3 compares my local file to the server version and reports"files are binary equal")
Attempting to check in the "modified" files results in a Visual Studio message saying "No Changes to Check In. All of the changes were either unmodified files or locks. The changes have been undone by the server"
As Charles and Graeme have hinted at, Visual Studio constantly make changes to user option files and such on the backed even if you don't make changes to the project directly.
I'm not sure what information is being stored but I do know that it happens. Common remedies is to not include the *.suo files. I also don't stored anything in the bin or obj folders in sauce control as this can have a similar effect as your talking about (if you build). (Checks out the project upon a build. Thought this does take an action to happen).
Overall it is unavoidable. It is just how VS2005, 2008 work.
Does this answer your question?
Regards,
Frank
There are two reasons I've encountered that cause this behavior.
The first is old source control bindings. If you have a project that used to be managed by another source control tool, it might have leftover bindings in the project file. Open the project file, and change the following settings from something like this:
SccProjectName="$/Team/Platform/Projects/MyProject"
SccAuxPath="http://teamFoundationServer.example.com:8080"
SccLocalPath="."
SccProvider="{88888888-4444-4444-4444-BBBBBBBBBBBB}"
to this:
SccProjectName="SAK"
SccAuxPath="SAK"
SccLocalPath="SAK"
SccProvider="SAK"
Different project types are defined in different ways. The above example is from a .vcproj, C# projects are in XML, VB looks like something else, but the meanings are the same. Simply set all four values to the constant string "SAK" and Visual Studio will automatically handle source control. See Alin Constantin's blog for details.
I haven't yet discovered the root of the other reason, but the project that is giving me trouble is also CppUnit 1.12.0! I'll keep digging and post my findings.
John
Have you put a .suo or .ncb file into source control perhaps?
Have you tried closing VS2005 after it checks out cppunit and then seeing if any changes were made?
I often encountered something like this with Web App solutions where the project file wasn't actually saved until you closed studio down and reopened it.
Just to clarify, I'm assuming that you mean Visual SourceSafe2005 is causing the problem, not Visual Studio. (FYI, Visual SourceSafe is usually abbreviated VSS.)
I've experienced this issue with VSS before. I think the limitation is really fundamental to Visual SourceSafe: it's just not that good of a product and I would move to something else if it's a decision you can influence.
If you can move to something else, I recommend Subversion for a small or medium-sized project. It's free, and does not use the pessimistic locking mechanism that Visual SourceSafe uses by default. There's an excellent Visual Studio add-on called VisualSVN that will give you the same functionality in the IDE (seeing what files have changed, etc.) that you get out of the box with VSS.
If you cannot change source control systems, I believe Visual SourceSafe has a mode called "non-exclusive checkouts" or something like that that uses the optimistic locking that Subversion and other source control systems use. Try setting that option at least for the files that are obviously not being changed and see if that resolves the issue.
I get this a lot when one of the projects in the the solution has source control information with path information that is not the same in source control as on your workstation. When VS opens the project it will automatically attempt to check out the project in question and
To fix it, you're best off having everyone who uses the project remove their local copies and do "get latest version..." to grab what is in your source control database.
you can also check the .sln file and look in the GlobalScxtion(SourceCodeControl) area for each project's information and see if the relative path is not how you have the projects stored on your workstation - though manually changing this file vs. doing a "Get Latest Version..." is much more likely to cause problems for the other developers who use the solution as well.
Your cppunit project is probably automatically creating one or more additional files when the project first loads, and then adding those files to the project. Or else one of the project's properties is being changed or incremented on load.
If you go ahead and check the project in, does it check itself out again next time you load it? Or does checking it in fix the problem for awhile?
Very often this sort of behavior is caused by VS trying to update source control bindings.
Graeme is correct, VS will not save project or solution files until you close VS.
I would let VS check the files out, then close VS, then diff them.

Resources