VS 2012 .user file causes unnecessary builds - visual-studio

There are a number of post in relation to Visual Studio building projects when not necessary. However, none seem to cover this particular issue.
I'm running Visual Studio 2012 Professional Update 4.
In my solution, I have a unit test project that has a project reference to a BizTalk Transforms project. This in-turn has a project reference to a BizTalk schemas project.
Every time I choose to run a unit test, the whole solution is built, even though no changes have been made.
The first line displayed in the build window is as follows:
Input file
'C:\Workspaces\rbowman\Branches\Current-branchRB\WareHouse\FFF.Enterprise.WareHouse.Schemas\FFF.Enterprise.WareHouse.Schemas.btproj.user'
is modified after output file
'C:\Workspaces\rbowman\Branches\Current-branchRB\WareHouse\FFF.Enterprise.WareHouse.Schemas\bin\Release\FFF.Enterprise.WareHouse.Schemas.pdb'.
Note: it seems to be the .user file that's causing the rebuild.
Does anyone know how to prevent this? Strange but I only seem to be getting the problem with BizTalk proj files. I am seeing this behavior across multiple solutions but the problem file is always identified as a btproj.user.
This screencast illustrates the problem: screencast link

You should remove the *.user file from your source control.
These files store user specific settings and should never be checked into source control.

I had the same problem. BizTalk projects insist on updating the btproj.user file on every build, resulting in a full rebuild every time.
I solved the problem with the following workaround: Set the ACL Write Flag on Deny. The build cannot update the file and the projects are only build when actually needed.
In my case build time went from 10 minutes to 2.

If you have just opened the solution, even if nothing has changed since the last time you built, if you click Run All, it will as per the description in Test Explorer do a build.

Related

Rebuilds with Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio 2010 is known for causing missed or unwanted rebuilds. Both are annoying. There are numerous posts on the topic.
I have observed that whenever you switch the Configuration or the Platform, the next Build will be a Rebuild. For the same reason, a Batch Build always performs a full Batch Rebuild.
So my question is specifically: is there a way to avoid that, after a switch (Configuration or Platform), the build turns to a rebuild.
As mentionned in the question comments, the problem comes from the "Intermediate Directory" pointing to same directory for every platform/configuration. The object files are then outputted in the same directory and creates conflicts when you change the configuration/platform, thus forcing a rebuild.
To avoid this problem, I recommend setting the Intermediate Directory to something like this:
$(SolutionDir)build\$(Configuration)\$(Platform)\

Visual Studio 2010 F5 Debugging C++ is not Rebuilding

I have a Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate C++ project (not managed or .NET). When I press F5 (i.e., start debugging), I want it to save all the files, rebuild those that changed, link the whole thing, and then run. Instead, it appears to use the last build. Thus, when I try to step into a function or something, I get the following error:
Based on my research, I have verified these options, the first three of which are in the Options dialog (can be reached under "Debug->Options and Settings"):
"Projects and Solutions->Build and Run->Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run" is checked. Some research indicated that it should be unchecked, but in my case I actually do only want it to rebuild the startup project. For what it's worth, I've tried unchecking it, with no effect.
"Projects and Solutions->Build and Run->On Run, when projects are out of date:" is set to "Always build".
"Debugging->Edit and Continue->Enable Edit and Continue" is checked, though it's greyed out.
In the Configuration Manager ("Build->Configuration Manager"), all solution configurations and platforms have their "Build" checkbox checked.
I have also tried deleting all Debug and Release directories as well as the .sdf and ipch directory.
For completeness, I suppose I should mention that I'm using precompiled headers, though I kinda doubt it matters.
[EDIT: I should note that it only seems to be one file (a .h file) that's doing it. I tried renaming it and recompiling, and also removing it from the solution and adding it back in, but it didn't work. ]
I was able to bring my solution back into the right state after deleting all .suo and .csproj.user files. Answer led to this solution. Hope this saves someone time.
I fell into this state after installing Ultimate over Professional and running profiling tools.
Once I had similar problem with my C# project and I think I have tried every possible suggestion available on internet but none worked and then this is what I have done:
Created an empty Project
Added startup function to verify that it does not show any error
Imported all my source code manually one by one
So, Yes, it was the solution. You already have done a lot so I would say you can get lucky by trying here and there however having a new project and importing your individual source file would be faster.
Another solution could be that switching the platform. I noticed that when I when to project properties, the new project I had just created had a platform of 'win32' and my other projects in the same solution had it set at x64. After I switched my project to x64, everything worked just fine. This worked for my interop(C,C+, C#) project and hopefully works for other projects as well.
I have successfully resolved it, try the following:
remove all temporary and intellisense files
remove all project from solution and then add them back(most important)
check projects 'Frameworks and References' to ensure they are valid

VS2010 always rebuilds solution?

I have a solution with 40 projects in it. I've recently reconfigured output path for each of these projects to this value:
..\Output
Change was made in *.csproj files for every build configuration.
This change did what was expected (gather all compiled assemblies into one folder) but unusual side effect is - every time I hit F5 Debug, portion of the (around 40%) assemblies always gets rebuilt. I have tested this several times without any changes to the projects themselves.
Once I undid changes build behaved as before.
I need help resolving this issue.
This issue is solved by changing the project files, cleaning solution, deleting all bin folders by hand, restarting Visual studio and rebuilding everything.
I would guess that the assemblies that get rebuilt are referenced from the project you are trying to build? Check the references in one of the projects, and see if this is correct. If so, you might try to adjust the properties for each reference, such as "Copy Local", and/or "Specific Version"; maybe each project "thinks" it needs to rebuild the other projects it references in order to achieve the same version number or something like that.

what can cause Visual Studio to rebuild my entire solution all the time?

I have a largeish solution in Visual Studio 2008 (around 30 projects, all C# and Script#), including some test projects.
When I start the application or run my tests, way to often Visual Studio rebuilds everything rather than just the changed parts and their dependencies.
If I don't change anything at all, it will not rebuild, but as soon as I change any file in any project, everything in the entire solution will be rebuilt, even the 90% of projects which were not affected at all.
Does anyone have an idea of what the problem can be, or provide me a hint of where I can start troubleshooting it?
Edit: To clarify, all projects in the solution are rebuilt, even those which are not directly or indirectly dependent on the project that has actually been modified. Even those which the modified project depends on, so it can't be a simple project reference issue.
The build sequence is determined by the project references (dependencies).
To avoid to build the projects depending on the project you've edited, you can use Build Current under the menu Build.
I setup CTL+B as shortcut to Build Current which saved me a lot of time than F6. Everytime I just use CTL+B after I save a file.
Hopefully this will help.
You can use the configuration manager to set up a specific config for your sln that will only build the projects you specify. You can find it under Build->Configuration Manager

Howto resolve... Visual Studio Source Control notification "Projects have recently been added to this solution"

After some use Visual Studio 2008 when opening a solution that is checked into Visual Studio Team Foundation will pop up a dialog saying:
Projects have recently been added to this solution. Do you want to get them from source control?
This happens every time the solution is loaded (even if no projects have been added). The only way I have found to remove this minor annoyance is to completely rebuild the SLN file.
Has anyone found a better/simpler way?
I had this recently after we moved a number of projects in the solution. I worked out eventually, that each project actual appears in solution file multiple times each with path information! So even though the path in the main reference of the project was correct it was wrong further down the file.
So go through the .sln file and make sure the paths in all the references of each project is correct.
For instance, the first reference for one of my projects is:
Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "ObexPushVB", "Samples\ObjectPush\ObexPushVB\ObexPushVB.vbproj", "{E3692A59-D636-48E8-9B57-7DA80A88E517}"
EndProject
In my case the path there was correctly updated. But then we have also for that project:
SccProjectUniqueName8 = Samples\\ObjectPush\\ObexPushVB\\ObexPushVB.vbproj
SccProjectTopLevelParentUniqueName8 = InTheHand.Net.Personal.sln
SccProjectName8 = Samples/ObjectPush/ObexPushVB
SccLocalPath8 = Samples\\ObjectPush\\ObexPushVB
So all of those paths needed to be updated too! After I fixed that manually all was well. (The sample there is after the fix BTW).
Hey, this actually happened to me about 4 years ago.
First, it sounds to me like someone on your team doesn't have all the updates applied to their visual studio installation. Go around and get everyone upgraded to the latest service pack for your VS version.
Once that is done, unbind the solution, fix the file, rebind it and tell everyone to do a force get latest on your TFS project.
See
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsversioncontrol/thread/c2822ef1-d5a9-4039-9d3e-498892ce70b6
http://www.nivisec.com/2008/09/vsts-projects-have-recently-been-added.html
(broken link: http://technorati.com/posts/Yadz3Mj1pxHPSJLlnUs1tL1sIwU5jXa5rNBbIAnYdvs%3D)
This message will also occur if your solution has a reference to a project whose location is outside of the solution directory, but it doesn't physically exist (i.e. you hadn't checked it out before opening the solution). VSS (or TFS) will then give you that message and clicking OK will automatically get latest on the project that's missing so your solution won't have any unloaded projects in it.
EDIT:
Reading that again confuses me. Basically you get the message if your solution has a source control binding to a project that isn't inside of the folder your solution is in, and that outside project doesn't physically exist on your machine. Clicking on OK will check the project out for you.
In my case it was a reference to a test project which has been deleted.
I noticed that when I inspected all the projects in the Solution Explorer. Our team uses solution folders so it was not normally visible and because it was a test project it didn't have any impact on the application.
After removing the project from the solution the messages is no longer shown.
I'm working with Visual Studio 2013.
For me, it happened after having modified the folder's structure of my solution (I added a sub-folder for a project directly on the source code explorer). I got rid of this boring error by removing all the projects from my solution, using the solution explorer. After that, I closed Visual Studio, manually edited the .sln file and removed the whole section :
GlobalSection(TeamFoundationVersionControl) = preSolution
To finish, I just added the projects back to the solution as "Existing projects" with solution explorer. Visual Studio will recreate by itself the removed section of the .sln file.
The same error message can occur if someone adds a project, check-in edited solution file, but don't adds project directory to source control.
To cut a long story short - this error can mean that in .sln file there's reference to .csproj file, but the .csproj itself is physically missing.
In my case I renamed a(n) (unloaded) project in VS. It correctly moved the project to a new folder and no data was lost. However the solution file still pointed to the old directory which still existed but was empty (so the project could not be actually loaded).
After deleting the project from the solution (which was no problem because the folder was allready empty) the problem was solved.
Adding the project again from the new location was no problem either.
I had this problem after moving a number of unit test projects that were under source control (VSTS) into another folder. After this whenever I opened a branch I would get the "Projects have recently been added to this solution. Do you want to get them from source control?" error.
For some reason the csproj file from the trunk wasn't under source control which meant it was missing from the branched version. I find this happens sometimes after moving source controlled projects.
To fix it I opened the original source trunk, used Source Control Explorer to add the missing file(s), then merged the trunk to the branches to copy over the missing csproj file.
After this I could open the branched versions without the warning popping up.

Resources