Why Snippet Manager doesn't works? - visual-studio

I really want to use this plugin. But once I do "Export as Snippet", I can't see a new tab where I can manage the snippet, set the Shourcut and such (as shown in the video). I only see this popup:
What is going on? Add new item?
I've updated to the last (update 3) version of Visual Studio 2015, and I've Snippet Designer 1.6.2.

UPDATE - WORKAROUND, AND POSSIBLE FUTURE FIX
I have tested Snippet Designer with Web Forms (Web Site Projects), and it does not work as described in the video, i.e. with the snippet file being automatically created.
However, it is possible to continue working with Snippet Designer, by selecting the Project Item named Code Snippet, as follows:
Create or open a Web Site project.
Select the text you wish to make a Snippet. Right click and select Export as Snippet.
In the New File Dialog window that opens, you need to locate the File Type Code Snippet. The easiest way in a long list of installed File Templates is to use the search feature, typing snippet.
Click Add. The file will be added to your project, and now Snippet Designer will activate, and function as normal.
NOTE: This is creating a default C# Code Snippet file, not the snippet file that is included within the Snippet Designer .vsix archive; it makes no difference as both files are empty, and Snippet Designer has its own code for building the contents of a snippet file according to the relevant XML schema, as specified by Microsoft.
A possible reason why Snippet Designer does not automatically create the snippet file itself, as it does with other projects, is that Web Site projects use a different approach to project metadata; for example, they do not have a .csproj file, which is typically used to list the files within a project.
It could also be that the code creating the snippet file asks Visual Studio, via Automation, to create a new instance of the snippet file Item Template; on a default Visual Studio 2015 installation, the listing of available Item Templates for a Web Site Project are located in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
14.0\Web\WebNewFileItems\NewFileItems.vsdir
Snippet Designer also includes a .vsdir file that has an entry for its own bundled snippet file, the source can be viewed here:
https://github.com/mmanela/SnippetDesigner/blob/master/src/SnippetDesigner/Templates/SnippetFile.vsdir
I would suggest the author of Snippet Designer investigate if the entry here is the source of the problem.
Microsoft provide documentation for the metadata contained in .vsdir files here: Template Directory Description (.Vsdir) Files
I do actually recommend a different product. My original answer continues below:
CURRENT SITUATION
As has been documented on the Snippet Designer GitHub Issue Tracker, there are issues with specific project types not being recognised, and therefore features not available.
The last commit to the Snippet Designer GitHub project was 1 year ago (November 2015); in view of the number of unresolved issues and lack of development, I would suggest a known working open source alternative.
WORKING ALTERNATIVE
Code Snippet Studio is another free, open source project for creating, editing and managing Snippets that fully supports Visual Studio 2015 (including Update 3), and which is actively developed and released:
Code Snippet Studio
Code Snippet Studio is an extension for Visual Studio 2015 that makes it easy to create, edit, package, and share IntelliSense code snippets for Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio Code. For C# and Visual Basic snippets, it also provides live Roslyn code analysis as you type to immediately detect code issues.
Note that multiple languages, including C#, VB, SQL, HTML, JavaScript are supported, among others. The image below shows VB editing.
Code Snippet Studio runs as either a Tool Window in Visual Studio 2015, or, as a standalone application (which personally I find ideal for working alongside Visual Studio Code on a laptop, or to make quick updates to my snippet packages).
Features include Roslyn based intellisense and analysis while editing snippets, specification of namespaces that need to be imported to support the Snippet, the ability to export to Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, and optionally, create a VSIX file for installation on multiple machines.
FURTHER INFORMATION
For more information, the following links are useful:
Channel 9 - A Look Behind Code Snippet Studio (with Video)
GitHub Project
Getting started Guide
Channel9 - One code snippet at a time [and more] with the Code Snippet Studio

This is a known problem, see github issues 57, 70, 84, 109. I can only suggest that you persuade addon author to fix it, or fix it yourself :)

Related

Visual Studio navigate to source code outside the current solution

At this new company I joined there is a very big and huge multi solution product that I'm working on.
So sometimes when I'm looking through the source i have an interface that has an implementation that is within a project in another solution and when I Ctrl-F12 click that interface I get a "The symbol has no implementations." dialog box from Visual Studio, because it can't find the piece of code where the interface is implemented in.
Is there any way of like telling Visual Studio to just look in some specific directory for the code it's looking for without having to put everything into one giant huge solution that makes Visual Studio explode? I tried that btw and Visual Studio exploded.
While debugging the software there's no problem with the navigation because the debug symbols contain the paths to the source and stuff (if I remember that correctly).
I'm also using Resharper so if there's anything that Resharper can do to help there I wouldn't mind either.

Typescript Snippets on Visual Studio

I would like to know if any of you guys know a way to enable the following feature on Visual Studio (either a hidden setting or an extension):
I'm used to javascript development on Visual Studio where if I type:
"if" on the text editor, it shows me a popup ("code snippet for an if statement"). Pressing ENTER the following is added:
if (true) {
}
This is not available for typescript files!
These snippets are really useful and this is just a simple example
Another basic feature I'm missing is "braces auto completion".
I am not sure if there is a way to enable it or not, but really would like these basic features available.
This also applies for the newly released Visual Studio 2015. On the other hand, Visual Studio Code seems to handle it very well.
There is an issue on Github about being able to use Javascript snippets in Typescript files, and to make the Snippet Code Manager being able to recognize Typescript as a Language.
https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/issues/312

Can't open a TFS build process template with Community Build Extensions in VS2012 using the dummy-project-with-refrences trick

I'm trying to open a TFS Build Process Template (DefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml) file, incorporating an activity from Community TFS Build Extensions. I'm following instractions from here, section Get the custom activities into Visual Studio. I had no problems with that back in the RC version of Visual Studio 2012 but now, after upgrading to the release version, an attempt to open the file ends up in an error:
System.Xaml.XamlException: 'The type ‘InArgument(mtbwa:BuildSettings)’ of property ‘BuildSettings’ could not be resolved.'
TFS itself doesn't seem to have any problems running builds based on this template.
I am able to open the file without the trick, but then of course the custom activities are not displayed properly.
Check this out:
http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/post/2012/08/30/Type-InArgument(mtbwaBuildSettings)-of-property-BuildSettings-errors-in-TFS-2012-RTM-builds.aspx
Quote:
"if the Visual Studio class library project you were using to manage the process template editing was targeting .NET 4.5, it needed to be 4.0. Well with Visual Studio 2012 RTM this is no longer the case, in fact it is the other way around."
I don't really think this is a great answer but I don't have enough rep to comment...
Build action on the xaml file is set to None?
I had a similar issue when opening build templates in VS 2012 RTM, but I was able to open the xaml "a little," meaning that I could open it in the workflow designer, but a lot of it was just the error activity. I found some errors to the effect that I should add references which I had not needed before (neither in VS 2010 or VS 11), such as PresentationCore and PresentationFramework. I wish I remembered more detail to pass on to you on this point.

T4 Code Generation missing in Visual Studio 2008?

So I decided to roll up my sleeves and try out the T4 code generation built into VS2008.
I was going to work off of this article:
http://www.olegsych.com/2008/09/t4-tutorial-creatating-your-first-code-generator/
So, I get to this part: "Click Project->Add New Item in the main menu and select Code Generation->File template in the dialog." and discover that the Code Generation category is missing on my machine. (Tried in both a VB and C# project).
Is there perhaps a seperate download to get T4 on your machine?
Update #1
So, I downloaded the T4 Toolbox from CodePlex: http://t4toolbox.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=27563
And things seem sorted out now. I was under the impression that the download was required for VS2005 but not for VS2008. Oh well, looks like its a fresh release anyways so is likely worthwhile to download.
Update #2
It now seems I don't have all the template types shown in the article. I only have File, Template, Generator, Unit Test
"Generator" is not listed in the article, and there are 3 in the article that I don't have. Strange....
Try just creating a text file and giving it a .tt extension. VS should recognize it right away. You may just be missing the template.
Do you happen to use Visual Basic? T4 Toolbox only provides 4 project item templates for VB - File, Template, Generator and Unit Test. The other templates you may have seen in the tutorial screenshots are implemented in C# and generate C# code. It seemed inappropriate to make them available in Visual Basic projects.

Visual Studio extensibility (add-in): How to access Silverlight-related properties?

This is the question that has been posted to MSDN forums some time ago, and stayed unanswered to this day:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsx/thread/676b13d4-acfc-4252-b102-5fc0553e4b81/
The property I'm interested in is ProjOutputReferences, stored in the Visual Studio solution (.sln) file.
In Visual Studio, this property is accessible through Property Pages dialog of a Silverlight WebSite project (requires that you have Silverlight Tools for VS2008 installed). There, there is a page called "Silverlight Applications" on which the content of the above mentioned property can be edited.
I need to access it programmatically inside my add-in, through VS automation or low-level interface(s).
In the latest released version of the Silverlight Tools for VS 2008 SP1, the list is persisted in the SilverlightApplicationList property in the referring project file.
For example, I have SilverlightApplication2 and SilverlightApplication2.Web in my solution (the latter references the former). I have the following node in my SilverlightApplication2.Web.csproj file:
<SilverlightApplicationList>{BBA7B148-42AE-477E-BB5E-0BA5AEC0A467}|..\SilverlightApplication2\SilverlightApplication2.csproj|ClientBin|False</SilverlightApplicationList>
There really isn’t a way to access this property via purely DTE, but you can use the Visual Studio SDK / VSIP interfaces to do so (specifically, you want to get the IVsBuildPropertyStorage interface for access to MSBuild properties). Here is a code snippet (runs in a menu command handler in a VSPackage):
IVsSolution solution = GetService(typeof(SVsSolution)) as IVsSolution;
IVsHierarchy hierarchy;
solution.GetProjectOfUniqueName(#"SilverlightApplication2.Web\SilverlightApplication2.Web.csproj", out hierarchy);
IVsBuildPropertyStorage buildPropertyStorage = hierarchy as IVsBuildPropertyStorage;
if (buildPropertyStorage != null)
{
string silverlightAppListValue;
buildPropertyStorage.GetPropertyValue("SilverlightApplicationList", "Debug", (uint)_PersistStorageType.PST_PROJECT_FILE, out silverlightAppListValue);
MessageBox.Show(silverlightAppListValue);
}
If you still want to try doing this from an Addin, you’ll have to get follow the approach that Craig mentions to cast the DTE object to an IServiceProvider (so you can call GetService).
-Aaron Marten
Since .sln files are just text files, try editing your .sln file using Notepad. You should be able to find the property you are looking for listed there. Assuming the information is in an understandable format, you should then be able to use a simple text parser to extract the info from the .sln programmatically.

Resources