We have a MVC 4.5 app and it has a bunch of LESS files. VS2013/Web Essentials does a fantastic job of compiling the LESS files to CSS as long as I am in VS. We had a new designer join our team and he is not too keen on using VS and I dont blame him. We have psake build scripts that build our project using MSBuild, so we can give him a powershell script to build the application on his machine without opening VS but surprisingly the LESS files are not getting compiled into CSS when built by MSBuild.
Is there any way I can use the same tools that Web Essentials uses to compile the Less files from the command line?
Alternative solution, use DotLess (http://www.dotlesscss.org/) for build time compiles. I have it compiling our LESS files using a VS post-build event. Though, guess this could conflict with Web Essentials, not sure who will run last. Currently not using Web Essentials.
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First, going to be honest. I'm a c#/java-language-level dweller. So I have no idea about how to compile native-C projects such as opus.
I've tried doing it myself, and I've tried googling it. I simply need help compiling the opus-codec API (on Windows).
Once I have the library compiled, I'll build a wrapper for it's API.
While my searches have indeed found opus wrappers targeting my current project's language (c#), I can't find an up-to-date one. I don't know if it matters, but I need it for it's VoIP capabilities.
Sorry for my stupidity in the matter.
[UPDATE]
After compiling with Visual Studio 2010: Ultimate, I have a .lib library file. I need a .dll. I don't know what I'm doing. Help?
In a C project there is going to be some way to drive a build of all the object files, libraries, etc. Basically the same thing as maven build in Java, just with different tools. You will have to have the right tools if you don't.
On unix systems it's usually Makefile driven, running command line programs that compile and link the program or library that is being built. In GUI environments like XCode or Visual Studio, there are ways to run the build directly from the UI.
Looking at the source tree, there's a directory with a number of Visual Studio 2010 projects in it - https://git.xiph.org/?p=opus.git;a=tree;f=win32/VS2010
If you're using Visual Studio, loading that up and trying a build to see if it still works is where I'd start. Or perhaps have a look at Any way to do Visual Studio "project only" build from command line? or other questions that reference msbuild.
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 am following this guide to installing and using MSpec, but at the step where he runs MSpec for the first time, I get the following error:
Could not load file or assembly 'file:///[...]\Nehemiah\Nehemiah.Specs\bin\Debug\Nehemiah.Specs.dll' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.
I have - to my knowledge - done everything more or less exactly like he did up to this step, except where differences arise because he's using VS2008 and I'm using VS2010, and everything has worked so far. The project Nehemijah.Specs (and the entire solution) builds without problem, both in Visual Studio and on my build server, and I can't find anything useful in Event Viewer (although I might not be looking in the right place here...)
What to do?
It appears you're compiling the Nehemiah.Specs.dll assembly against the .NET Framework 4. In order to run your specifications you need the .NET 4 build of MSpec which contains a console runner (mspec.exe) that is suitable for this version of the framework. You can find the a zip file containing the build on CodeBetter's CI server.
Other possibilities of running .NET 4 spec assemblies are
TestDriven.Net 3.0
ReSharper 5.0
Runners for both tools are also included in the distribution.
In short: is there a way to compile and run single file in NetBeans or Visual Studio without having to setup and tinker with projects?
I'm currently using code::blocks as my IDE. It's fast and very simple: perfect for my needs as a begginner.
I wanted to dive a little deeper and try out a more advanced IDE such as NetBeans or Visual Studio. It appears I have to mess with projects and have a setup that seems overkill for having to compile and run one very simple .c/.cpp source file that contains less than 50-100 lines of code etc.
Is there a way around this?
You always have to setup a project - this is where information about libraries etc is found by the IDE, so it cannot do without. If you just have one file, and not a lot of dependencies you could just stick with a plain editor. Once you want auto completion of functions, refactoring, etc... you have to store the information about what is relevant somewhere, and the some sort of 'project' will become necessary.
I'm curious about your thoughts on moving to a new IDE (specifically Eclipse). I have been hearing wonderful things about it from this community and I'm always on the lookout to try new things.
Currently I'm running Visual Studio 2005, with a bunch of external commands loaded (for compiling down to a binary, running lint, etc). We're developing C code for microcontrollers.
I've read over some of the other threads on here about the advantages and disadvantages to Eclipse and Visual Studio (specifically SO - best IDE thread and SO - best C IDE thread), but I'd like to hear your thoughts on using it for programming an embedded environment. I'd imagine that there is a simple way to use the external tools that Visual Studio currently uses (it simply calls various batch files that we've created).
Is it worth it to specifically switch over to Eclipse?
Answer to you question about way to call external tools: no problem - from eclispe you can anything: external program, batch file etc. Moreover, if you use custom build generator - you could use it transparent with eclipse.
I don't think I would switch from Visual Studio to Eclipse in hopes of getting a better IDE. Typically an embedded manufacturer makes plugins and toolchains that work specificially with Eclispe, that's what makes it worth using in the Embedded world. For example with the NetBurner plug-ins, when creating a new project you can just select New NetBurner Device Excecutable, or New NetBurner Library, all the default includes and libraries get set up for you and the proper cross platform tool chain is set up for you automatically. In the NetBurner case it also uses the Eclipse managed build process (as opposed to make files) which I find nice. There is also support for using make files if you prefer that option.
While I have a couple of tools set up to run as external tools (lint, an auto version updater, DOS prompt etc) most steps can be triggered from pre-build or post-build steps or there are many many add-ons for common needs like source code management, bug tracking, etc. There is great support for SVN, Trac and Mylyn for example. I use both VS2010 and Eclipse. I like them both but VS2010 is the better IDE. It's a little hard to compare because I do C# (and a little C++/CLI )in VS and C++ in Eclipse. That said, I wouldn't relish the though of trying set up VS to do my embedded tasks.