I use Xorax IncrediBuild to build Visual Studio 2013 (or later) solutions and projects, they're mostly .vcxproj with a bunch of .csproj ones.
It took me a little bit of digging, but I've learned that:
When IncrediBuild is used with the regular Visual Studio, it uses the Devenv.exe by default.
Since version 5.0, BuildConsole.exe supports a new switch: /UseMSBuild to specifically instruct IncrediBuild to use MSBuild's build engine instead of the default Visual Studio's DevEnv.
So, in case of Visual Studio projects, there are two modes available:
BuildConsole.exe MyProj.vcxproj which uses DevEnv.exe
BuildConsole.exe MyProj.vcxproj /usemsbuild which uses MSBuild.exe
I'd like to learn if there are any differences between using the two engines.
I have made some tests and observed that:
IncrediBuild "Initializing..." phase takes slightly longer in case of DevEnv.exe.
BuildConsole.exe generates different output, obviously.
No (or insignificant) difference in build performance.
In case of building individual C/C++ native projects (.vcxproj) as well as whole solutions (.sln), what are advantages and disadvantages of using DevEnv.exe versus MSBuild.exe?
** disclaimer: I work at IncrediBuild **
We've determined together with Microsoft that in order to get builds that behave in the same manner as building from within Visual Studio (without IncrediBuild), DevEnv should be used. MSBuild executes builds in a slightly different manner than VS both in the build output it produces and in the way it behaves when executing custom steps and some other minor things. If a user wants IncrediBuild builds to behave in the same manner as he is used to when building from Visual Studio, the default way should be used (IncrediBuild executing DevEnv). If a user is used to execute his builds using MSBuild, whether from the command line or through TFS, the UseMSBuild switch should be used. We wanted to allow users to choose the way they would like IncrediBuild to work depending on the way they are used to do that, same as Microsoft supporting both DevEnv and MSBuild.
Additional comments:
The initialization stage is indeed longer when using Devenv, since devenv loads and parses the solution and .vcxproj files in a different manner than msbuild. The more Projects a solution has – the longer this phase should take. The increase of time it takes this phase to complete usually greatly offset by the speed increase in the actual build time – when building several projects at the same time.
Devenv is highly recommended for our Predicted Execution feature which can provide up to 20% of additional build acceleration due to the above way of work which would be not possible using MSBuild.
Microsoft is pretty explicit about it:
For build-related tasks, it is now recommended that you use MSBuild instead of devenv. For more information, see MSBuild Command Line Reference.
A note in the Devenv documentation since VS2010, the first version of VS that started supporting building C++ projects with MSBuild and also changed the default project file extension from .vcproj to vcxproj.
The wisdom of this kind of advice can only be inferred when they are not explicit about it. One you ready saw, Devenv.exe is a pretty heavy process with many DLL dependencies, it takes a while to get going. Another you could fret about with the way you are doing it now, original guidance was to use Devenv.com instead of Devenv.exe. Those dependencies are also troublemakers, the kind that tend to get in the way or just plain fall over when Devenv.exe runs in an unusual runtime environment like a service. Sample story-from-hell is this Q+A, three answers and none look correct. There are others.
Plain advice is to use the recommended way.
Related
If I run a c++ project/solution, in Visual Studio, with a command line option "--xx", how can I do the exact same thing from TeamCity ?
I have searched and have been unable to find any option.
The one thing that looks like "Command line parameters" is actually designated for MSBuild.
I have to run the solution - and not just the executable generated by the solution.
Thank you.
Your Visual Studio build is executed using MSBuild on the server, the name may be a little confusing, but the parameters should function in the same way using that MSBuild parameter box as passing them to visual studio would be.
if there are issues getting this to work using that parameters box, we will need some more information about the commands you need to run and the behaviour you need.
Edit following questioner's comment
The problem in actuality here is that Visual Studio builds don't really exist in TeamCity, visual studio build is actually just going to run MsBuild against your visual studio solution, which, in terms of Google Test, is sufficiently different to cause your problems.
To resolve this, you are probably going to have to change your build runner to just be an MsBuild script which builds your solution and runs the Google tests. thankfully, the internet provides:
http://code.google.com/p/msbuildteamcitytasks/wiki/RunGoogleTests
The above is some MsBuild tasks which claim to integrate GoogleTest results completely with TeamCity, doing all the leg work for you in that regard. The result of this is that you only need a very brief build script calling MsBuild on your solution, followed by calling that MsBuild Task as required. I cant confirm how well they work or how easy they are to set up as I haven't used them, but the documentation on the page implies it should be reasonably easy to put together.
below is a snippet of MsBuild that will build your solution(s)
<MSBuild Projects="#(BuildProjects)" Targets="Rebuild" BuildInParallel="true" Properties="Configuration=Debug;Platform=$(Platform)">
<Output ItemName="DebugOutputs" TaskParameter="TargetOutputs"/>
</MSBuild>
where each $() variable is a system property in your TeamCity configuration #(BuildProjects) is a list of solutions generated using this:
<ItemGroup>
<BuildProjects Include="$(WorkingArea)\**\*.sln" />
</ItemGroup>
you can of course hard code any and all of these variables, or change parameters as required, but this example will give you some freedom to reuse the script on other projects (its not a full script, there's some extra structure stuff to go around the outside).
you can of course build in further functionality to the script as required, or leave it as simple as possible to make it easy to understand.
there is further documentation on MsBuild scripts are available from these locations:
http://www.universalthread.com/ViewPageArticle.aspx?ID=61
http://codingcockerel.co.uk/2008/04/15/automating-the-build-with-msbuild/
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/12985/Practical-NET2-and-C-2-An-introduction-to-MSBuild
I'm sure there's plenty more out there if you need it.
Well, In TeamCity (I am using version 6.5.x), When you add a new Build Step, select the Build runner as Visual Studio (sln) or Visual Studio 2003 as per your requirement and there you'll get the option to pass command line parameters.
What Version of TeamCity do you use?
I am trying to build MSIs in a TFS Build by shelling out to DEVENV.exe (since MSBUILD does not support VSPROJs). In any case, my first installer project builds fine, the second one fails. If I reverse the order, same thing happends (i.e. the error does not follow the project). Looking at the output, I get the following errors:
Deserializing the project state for project '[MyProject].dbproj'
[MyProject].dbproj : error : Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.
Also, I get:
Package 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.TestCaseManagement, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' failed to load
It looks as though the first build tries to serialize the DB project (and it says it succeeds, but there is no DBML file anywhere). Then the second build tries to deserialize the DB project and fails.
I've tried resetting env settings (using the /resetusersettings flag) as well as using the /resetskippkgs flag. Nothing works.
Any ideas?
When you shell out to DevEnv, are you building that specific project (.vdproj file), or are you building the solution? It sounds like VS is trying to open the solution on the build machine and the database and test project systems aren't present.
Have you considered porting your setup project to WiX?
Start simple. Unless you're well versed in the problem you're trying to solve it's usually best to try it "by hand" before getting it running as part of a TFS build. RDP into the build server and try running the necessary commands at the command line and see what happens. You can even go simpler than that and RDP into the build machine and load Visual Studio and build it.
Bottom line is that if you can't get it to build within Visual Studio or at the command line by calling devenv.exe it won't work as part of the team build.
I am using the below Exec task to do precisely what you are doing as part of a TFS build. So I know this works. Your platform and configuration may vary depending on what you're building. The nice thing about this is that you'll have a log file at C:\Temp\MSIBuildOutputLog.txt that you can analyze for additional errors and information.
<Exec Command=""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" "$(PathToSolution)\solution.sln" /Build "Release|Mixed Platforms" /out "C:\Temp\MSIBuildOutputLog.txt"" />
One important thing to note... There is a bug in VS2010 which causes MSI generation to fail when you try to run it at the command line using devenv.exe. This took me days to find and figure out, but you need this hotfix. Worked like a charm...
http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2286556
Actually it's the deployment projects that don't support msbuild. FWIW, this is all deprecated in the next release of Visual Studio so you might want to start looking at InstallShield Limited Edition and/or Windows Installer XML now before spending too much time on dead end, broken technology. Both of these alternatives have proper MSBuild support aswell as many other improvements.
It would be perhaps better and quicker to adopt WIX (Windows Installer XML) which is the technology MS now recommends to use within VS/MSBuild/TFSBuild environment to crate MSIs.
It is relatively easy to setup and integrate within your VS Solutions. It uses XML based files to describe your MSIs and uses these files to create your MSIs when you compile.
I would start by downloading Wix from http://wix.codeplex.com/
Once installed you would be able to use the VS2010 integration of Wix based projects to create MSIs. To get started quickly simply add a new Wix project to your solution and reference the projects whose output you wish to combine into an MSI. Next you can run a tool called "Heat" which is included with Wix toolkit to generate the XML files by scanning your projects.
Once you have these XML files, add them to your Wix project and compile.
I've been programming in Linux/UNIX for several years now, but recently I needed to do some stuff in VS2008. I had difficulties with understanding how VS organizes work. Do you know any resources (free web pages preferred, but books also acceptable) which would show me a general picture and explain at least some details? Examples welcome, comparison with typical UNIX stack very welcome.
I don't need a language (C#/C++/VB/...) reference/guide; I've seen some of them and none of them seem to suggest how to work with VS efficiently.
You might be interested in introductions to MSBuild, the project format of Visual Studio. Whereas in UNIX you have a autoconfig script, and Makefiles, VS2008 allows most configuration through right clicks and menu options.
A second area of interest will likely be build configurations. Instead of re-running the configure script on different targets, or for different stacks, you specify targets with the configuration manager. Once you select a new configuration ("x86", or "Release", or custom ones like "Production"), VS churns for a while, as it updates the Intellisense of your new preprocessor definitions, for example, and Resource files. Your "Debug" configuration will likely define the macro "DEBUG", so you can use regions surrounded with #ifdef DEBUG, for example.
Visual Studio organizes common groups of source files into "Projects", which can be referenced by one or more "Solutions". Projects establish interdependency on one another, and external libraries. If you look at the structure of the projects in the Microsoft Enterprise Library, you will notice that there are several different Solution files (*.sln) which encompass different groups of common project files. You might have a different solution file, for example, if you want to reduce load/compile time, by not loading the unit test projects with every build.
So, analogies:
UNIX way:
# ./configure
# make
# nano Makefile
# make
VS2008 way:
# (Set up "Project Properties", Conditional Compilation Symbols, Build Paths, all from GUI application)
# (Click Build)
# (Change Configuration)
# (Click Build)
I don't have any links for you, but:
Visual Studio can open one and only one Solution at a time
A Solution may have zero (not very useful) or more Projects
Code (in whatever language) goes into projects
Projects can have any number of files and/or directories
Projects can reference files anywhere, not just within their own directory structure (though few do)
Visual Studio is a very flexible and powerful IDE. I think the best way to get the big picture is to build that big picture yourself in your own terms by using the heck out of it.
Build configurations and project properties are definitely two areas you will want to focus on.
You should explore the various options and configuration switches for generating assemblies and how they are managed in general. Learning the various build options and how assemblies are managed can save you headaches down the road.
The VS debugger is a thing of beauty and I recommend investing some time in exploring its capabilities. I recommend you familiarize yourself with:
Breakpoint management (especially the breakpoint window) and also conditional breakpoints
The Watch and Locals windows
Thread and Memory windows and tools
Immediate window (often overlooked and underrated if you ask me)
Finally, you should take a look at some tried and tested tools and plugins and get familiar with them. I would personally recommend ReSharper, Dependancy Walker, and .NET Reflector. ReSharper is an excellent productivity tool and Dependancy Walker and .NET Reflector are excellent analysis and debugging aids
Here's a couple of handy stackoverflow threads:
Do you have any recommended add-ons/plugins for Microsoft Visual Studio?
Favourite Visual Studio keyboard shortcuts
Have you considered installing cygwin and gcc? If you're looking to write a console app, it might just do the trick.
I'm running Visual Studio 2008 with the stuff-of-nightmares awful MS test framework. Trouble is that it's sending my CPU to 100% (well 25% on a quad-core).
My question is why can't Visual Studio run on more than one core? Surely M$ must have a sufficient handle on threading to get this to work.
I have VS2008 running on all 4 CPUs. Just set this environment variable / project flag.
/MP
(It can be set in C/C++ Settings, Advanced. In project settings)
Edit: The MP flag can also accept a number, e.g. /MP2 which means it will only run on 2 cores. Leaving it as just /MP means it will run on the maximum amount of cores.
Edit2: The MP flag is probably for the compiler only.
You can ask VS to compile multiple projects in parallel as well as compiling parallelly (!?) within a project.
Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > maximum number of parallel projects build.
This will build C++ and C# in parallel as well!
In case anyone comes across this old question, VS2012 introduced parallel builds as a standard feature. Quote from the article:
Visual Studio 2010 included an option for "maximum number of parallel
project builds." Although there was no indication of any restriction,
this IDE option only worked for C++ projects. Fortunately, this
restriction no longer applies to Visual Studio 11. Rather, there's now
full support for parallel builds in other languages as well. To view
this, run a copy of Process Explorer at the same time a solution with
numerous projects is building. You'll see that multiple MSBuild
instances are created -- as many as specified in the "maximum number
of parallel project builds."
Now that Visual Studio 2010 has been released for a bit, consider upgrading to make use of the parallelTestCount attribute in MSTest's .testsettings file, as described at How to: Run Unit Tests Faster Using a Computer with Multiple CPUs or Cores.
There are a few limitations, such as:
Only simple unit tests are supported (i.e. excludes coded UI tests and ASP.NET-hosted tests)
Tests must be thread-safe (all tests are run in the same process)
You can't collect code coverage (among other data & diagnostics) at the same time
Example, using 0 to mean auto-detect (the default is 1):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<TestSettings
name="Release"
id="{GUID}"
xmlns="http://microsoft.com/schemas/VisualStudio/TeamTest/2010">
<Description>
These are default test settings for a local test run.
</Description>
<Execution parallelTestCount="0">
(...)
</Execution>
</TestSettings>
A few blogs have noted that you might have to close and re-open your project for Visual Studio to notice you added/changed that attribute. Also, if you edit the test settings file using the GUI, you'll probably have to re-add the parallelTestCount attribute.
We also added multiple core support for doing multi-threaded builds on the command line for those of you with a lot of projects and long build times. Enabling multiple core support requires only a few new properties, and MSBuild manages all of the work to schedule projects efficiently and effectively. The MSBuild team has tested this ability to scale by building some projects on a 64-CPU machine.
that is from somasegar blog
So they sort of started doing it, well at least for the build.
The /MP flag is only for builds, we at least it is according to this msdn
Now I would love to be wrong about it, but im pretty sure its just for builds. Which of course is still very useful.
I'm sure it's very hard. Huge existing GUI-heavy non-threaded code base to multi-threaded. Sounds like a 10 to me.
But it seems to use multi-cores to me. The Intellesense seems threaded. The build system has multi-project building and for C++ multi-file building as well.
You problems with these tools sounds a bit deeper then how well they use you CPUs.
For Visual Studio 2010 Go to Tools > Options > Projects & Solutions > Build and Run.
You will then see an entry to enter a number for the 'maximum number of parallel project builds'; my PC has an i7-3770 CPU, a Quad Core with HyperThreading, so it is set to 8.
For information on different versions of Visual Studio go here and select your version: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cyhcc7zc(v=vs.100).aspx
e.g. for Visual Studio 2010 this property only affects C++ builds:
Specifies the maximum number of Visual C++ projects that can build at the same time. To optimize the build process, the maximum number of parallel project builds is automatically set to the number of CPUs of your computer. The maximum is 32.
But for Visual Studio it's for C++ and C#:
maximum number of parallel project builds
Specifies the maximum number of Visual C++ and Visual C# projects that can build at the same time. To optimize the build process, the maximum number of parallel project builds is automatically set to the number of CPUs of your computer. The maximum is 32.
Is it any compilator option of flag?
You can if you setup an external tool pointing to MsBuild to build the solution with the multiple process flag /m.
Scott Hanselman wrote a nice post on how to accomplish this, so I won't repeat what he has already done.
MSDN answers your question:
Using Multiple Processors to Build Projects
In case anyone comes across this, VS2012 introduced parallel builds as a standard feature. Quote from the article:
Visual Studio 2010 included an option for "maximum number of parallel
project builds." Although there was no indication of any restriction,
this IDE option only worked for C++ projects. Fortunately, this
restriction no longer applies to Visual Studio 11. Rather, there's now
full support for parallel builds in other languages as well. To view
this, run a copy of Process Explorer at the same time a solution with
numerous projects is building. You'll see that multiple MSBuild
instances are created -- as many as specified in the "maximum number
of parallel project builds."