I'm using VS.NET 2010. My solution has both a winforms and setup projects. The solution is fairly old. I've done a new compile and have run the MSI. It installs everything fine but the EXE and config file that get installed are dated from 2011. I don't know where these files are coming from. Since I just compiled both projects, the EXE and config files in the project folders have current dates.
Where do I look to find out where the setup project is getting these older files from?
You may have to define "it installs everything fine" because clearly it doesn't. I suspect that you just rebuilt the MSI file and didn't use RemovePreviousVersions. Or even if you did use RPV, you didn't increment the file versions of the versioned files. It's versions that matter with versioned files, not dates. If your binaries don't have versions you need to add them.
This still applies, with the extra step that you must increment file versions now.
https://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/visual-studio/updates-to-setup-projects/
Related
I think I have various beads on why this may be happening, but I can't quite put all the clues together.
We were building an ASP.NET app in VS 2019 with a nuget dependency (Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SNI.1.0.19235.1 if it matters). I've used msbuild -t:package and in VS 2019, it would spit out bin\x86 and bin\x64 folders with the DLL from that nuget package. That package step would spit out a zip file and opening that up you can see the x86/x64 folders in there.
We upgraded to VS 2022 and the CPU arch folders are no longer there. I can see them get created in the working directory, but not in the package output.
Nothing in the project has changed. It's set to target "AnyCPU" and Framework 4.6.2. The command we're using to build hasn't changed either. As far as I can tell, it's just the upgrade to VS 2022.
I know VS 2022 is now 64-bit native, so I have a suspicion that's in play here. Any ideas on why those CPU-architecture folders are no longer included in the zip package? And how to get them back in there?
Thanks!
According to your description I make some test, hope it can help you:
Check your Configuration Manager under Build in the menu and add new Platform you need.
Build the project in Batch Build under Build in the menu.
We can see that .dll files are created in the same path so it will be covered.
Open the project file.(Right click on the project and Unload Project then right click again an choose edit project file)
You can see code like this:
Change the OutputPath to “bin\x64\Debug\”, ”bin\x64\Release\” and so on.
Reload the project and rebuild the project in Batch Build.
About how to Pack multiple platforms into one package you can see this(Pack multiple platforms into one package, using dotnet pack ).
If it helps anyone, since my problem was specifically with the SNI.dll not being emitted in the x64/x86 folders, my workaround solution was to upgrade the Microsoft.Data.* libraries to a newer version. The x64/x86 folders are still not emitted, but I now see Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SNI.x64.dll and Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.SNI.x86.dll files in the root bin folder.
It doesn't answer the original question, but at least it got me moving.
I want to version my visual studio 2010 debug builds. I'm going to use git. Right now all the project files are in 'project' and the output binaries are put by visual studio in the directory 'project\debug'. I've read a few questions on here that have ignore lists for Visual Studio but most of them have an ignore list that ignores the binary files, like the obj exe idb pdb ilk etc.
If I want to be able to debug my exe in the future what files do I need to keep? Is there any reason to keep the obj files? Does VS use them at all during debugging or tracing a crash? I thought I should keep at least the the pdb files and the exe. So that would be project.exe, project.pdb and vc100.pdb. But what about vc100.idb, project.ilk, project.res... etc. Is there an ignore list that will ignore everything that isn't needed to keep binary builds but keep everything that is?
I want to make sure if a user sends me a crash dump or reports a problem at some point in the future that I can go back to the version that was being used and be able to debug it. I had also hoped to make the binaries and debug files available in a remote repo so that anyone else could as well. Thanks!
Don't keep binaries in version control. Instead, build from source.
Since the binaries are built from source, and you have the source versioned already, just re-build the particular version as-needed. It will both keep your version control system lean and fast, as well as not cause merge headaches (which binaries are notorious for).
So, the answer is don't keep any binaries in version control.
If you feel you really must keep them, however, then just zip them up and store them like normal files using the tag of the build they came from.
I'm going to keep project.exe and project.pdb in the branch. The other files like *.obj, *.ilk, and *.sdf are not needed. Neither are the vc100.* files. I made my decision after speaking to a number of people in person and reviewing this:
File Types Created for Visual C++ Projects
and this:
Which Visual C++ file types should be committed to version control?
Although that SO question/answer does not answer my question it gave me a lot of good information. I also looked through my project.pdb for all the file references to confirm which files in my project that I needed to keep around. I used this command from the debugging tools for windows:
srcsrv\srctool -r project.pdb
I have made a program in VS2010, written in C#. It uses extra libraries and databases.
My teacher wanted to test it a few days ago, so I had sent him the setup file which publishing the project created. This setup didn't work because there were "files missing".
I then just sent him the whole published map.
Which files do I need to include for a published program to install and work on another pc?
It depends on several things. Usually the contents of the bin\debug or bin\release should be sufficient providing your teacher has the same version of .Net installed. One thing it depends greatly on is whether or not you are using any libraries outside the core .Net. If not, then the bin directory should be sufficient. If you are using third party libraries and those libraries are GAC'ed on your machine then VS will not copy them to the bin directories.
This is a very similar question: Dependencies and references - What exactly should I reference?
This is a problem that has been eating at me for a while, and I just haven't found a good solution (no pun intended) for it.
I'm using Visual Studio 2010 with Subversion and Ankhsvn. It works very well, however, my biggest problem with it is that it only retrieves and manages files that are "included in the project". This is great in many situations, but kind of sucks when you want a folder with objects that you want to include in the solution, but do not want to have in the project itself (in this case a web project).
In this case, I want to include some 3rd party DLL's into source control (so they can be kept up to date when syncronizing with version control). I don't want the developers to have to install the 3rd party dll's seperately. What normally happens is that you reference the DLL's from some other location and they get copied into your bin folder at compile time.
I do not wish to include them in the project because i don't wan them copied to the web server when I publish the site (other than via the bin directory where they should be). I thought of creating a seperate project for these, but that would create a useless dll with no purpose that would then get copied to the bin folder because it's referenced.
I've also tried to check them in from the bin folder, but this has caused a number of problems where files did not syncronize prolerly, with subversion saying things about an already version folder being present etc.. This seems to be a subversion or ankhsvn problem rather than a visual studio one. As such, i try to keep the bin folder untouched by version control.
How have you solved this problem in your projects?
This is how we do it in our project.
We have a SourceCode folder which has the subfolders for the projects which contain the code.
Additionally this has a folder called Library which has the correct version of any 3rd party dll's that we use. This folder in in version control and hence everyone always has the correct version of the 3rd party dll's
All references in the projects to 3rd party dll's are relative from this Library folder.
Since everyone has the SourceCode folder on their machine, it works fine with no issues.
EDIT:
Added image of Solution Folder with library contents to it
I have a Windows Forms application with an installer (.msi) already created with Visual Studio. I am now creating a new installer for version 2.0 with the property RemovePreviousVersions set to true.
Now, when I install 2.0 over 1.0 it removes 1.0 and installs 2.0 completely.
Is there a way that I can tell the installer if you find some files already installed (like .xml files used for data) then don't override them?
I am trying to have my 2.0 installer serve the 2 purposes:
Install from scratch for new users
Existing users will upgrade but not lose their customizations
The deployment project in VS does not overwrite files. What happens is that since you have RemovePreviousVersions set to true, when you change your program file version and the ProductCode GUID of the setup project, it will first uninstall the previous version and then will do a clean install of the new version.
To make sure some files don't get overwritten, I usually exclude them from the Content or Primary output files (wherever they are located) and then add them separately to the setup project. Doing this, you can individually set properties for those files. The property you are looking for is called Permanent" that if set to true will never uninstall the file in question, and therefore will never overwrite it with a new version. The only drawback with this is that when you uninstall the product, the Permanent files will not get removed from their target locations, but in my case (usually local DB files), that's a good thing ;)
Cheers!
[edit] The above is true for VS 2008 SP1. Haven't tried it on other versions, so hopefully you are using the same VS version or it works for the version you use.
[edit2] Oh, also you could also use the "Condition" property to achieve something similar. If you do that, make sure that "Transitive" is set to True so the Condition is always evaluated. Haven't tried it with Conditions, but that's another option you could look at. Other than these 2, I think that's pretty much it for VS deployment projects.
When I was in a similar situation what I did was:
The files that were customized by each user and should NOT be touched by the installer were NOT included in the MSI (NOT in the Visual Studio Setup Project). When the app was run for the first time I generated the XML files through the code.
The files that were static (e.g. data that was used to populate Dropdownlists) I included in the MSI and I can update those by building a new MSI with Visual Studio.
Basically don't include customizable files in your MSI project. Create them in code for new users.
I never looked into telling the MSI not to update certain files that are included in the MSI file. The solution I came up with was perfect for me. I don't know if it can be done.
I hope this helps.