I have a really strange problem with my Visual Studio.
I usually press CTRL + S pretty often (call me paranoid, well however I got that habit some years ago now and I really don't want to get rid of it :-))
Now I had the issue that I was editing one file, changing a few dozen of strings according to a spec I had open in Word; so I switch around these two tasks pretty often, make one or two changes and then save.
The odd thing is, every once in a while, after saving, my file is suddenly in read-only-mode, so I cannot navigate through my changes (CTRL+Z/CTRL+Y) and have to reopen that file to continue to code and pray.
Indeed it feels random to me when this occurs:
sometimes I only change 1 thing and save and then it's immediately read-only,
well in other cases it will let me edit several things until it is stuck.
Someone else also experiencing this and maybe got a tip?
Maybe I hit some magic hotkey or something?
My bad, please check if your projects folder is not a synchronized one, so when you edit (change) your project, the backup tool starts to update in remote location for synchronization purposes, so locks the file.
The answer to this problem is most likely that you are currently in Debug mode - i.e. the application is being run. Click "Stop" and it'll allow you to edit the files again.
By default, you cannot edit source files while the Debugger is running.
Related
Lately, VS has been getting more and more annoying about warning me about editing code while debugging. Regardless of whether it is a popup telling me that a file has been edited, purple underlining, or a warning that gets grouped with the compiler warnings and errors, I don't want it. I wish it would just let me edit, continue running the program that was built, and keep quiet about it.
Is there a way to tell it to do that?
Incidentally, I have already disabled edit and continue. See Edit and Continue: "Changes are not allowed when..."
You can apply changes to the source code in debug mode when you stop at a breakpoint.
Manual: How to: Apply Edits in Break Mode with Edit and Continue (Visual Basic)
This is a workaround but some workarounds, well, work.
Run two instances of VS on the same solution. Debug one and encounter needed edit. Ctrl+TAB to the other instance and make the edit (without saving... by the way use auto-save). Continue until you’re done, and then save the files in instance 2. After debug, the changes are available to both instances.
Rarely (at least in my experience) do you actually want edit-and-continue; usually you’re watching the code under debug and realize it is wrong and want to fix it, but also want to see some downstream effects without killing the debug session.
This gives you that with a minor inconvenient task switch.
I've given up trying to stop VS from crashing (usually 2 to 3 times a day). Now I'm moving on to finding a way limit the amount of work that needs to be redone when I re-open my project after a crash.
When VS crashes, any changes you have made to the workspace such as which files are open, pinned etc are gone. Any breakpoints, bookmarks etc are also gone. If VS is shutdown normally without crashing then all these workspace changes are saved, but if it crashes they're lost. I am now at the point where I deliberately shutdown VS every so often just so that any changes will be saved when it inevitably crashes.
Is there a way to manually save the workspace?
For anyone who may come across this, the problem seems to have been related to a plugin called VisualAssist. A recent update seems to have completely fixed the issue.
File - Save all should save most of the current workspace configuration.
It doesn't happen all the time, with every file, but some times when I open I file I immedaitely see the asterisk show up in the tabs, as if I've made changes to a file when I haven't.
Moving to a new application at work where this one solution has over 100 projects, skimming through the code to try and get familiar with it, it's really annoying constantly getting bombarded asking if i want to save/discard my changes when I haven't made any.
Just wondering if there's a way to prevent it / what causes it.
I am using Visual Source Safe 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.
##$% this Source Safe. With programs like Source Safe that ##$% up my data, who needs viruses, hard drive failure, and other assorted calamities.
My story starts with getting my workstation re-imaged on Monday this week. After the machine was re-imaged, I downloaded from Source Safe the source code I was working on. Thursday afternoon, I noticed that as I was working on my source code, the files were not being automatically checked out from Source Safe as I worked, however there was no problem saving my work on the disk.
So... I needed to check in my work. I noticed that the files (not checked out from Source Safe) were not read-only as they usually are, so I made them read-only.
I feel like I should have backed up my data locally at this point and I'm now kicking myself for not doing so, but the next thing that I did was I went back to Visual Studio to continue my work and see if I could get the program to automatically check out the files I was changing.
The first time that I began to edit a file (BigLongCodeFile.cs), it automatically checked out the file for me as I had hoped. However, in a split second it displayed a dialog that explained, "Your action caused a check out of file(s) BigLongCodeFile.cs, and a new version from source control has been loaded in the develpment environment. Please re-do your changes if necessary." And just like that, Visual Studio undid all the changes I had done to that file since Monday, representing hours of lost work for me.
It didn't prompt if I wanted to do this, just showed me a dialog informing me that the damage is done. With development tools like this, who needs a virus to destroy his work?
Is there some way to get my data back, or some way to avoid this?
The mistake was setting the flag back to read only, which was exacerbated by not making a copy of the files when you found things were not getting auto checked out from SourceSafe. Unless the new copy was written to a different location on the drive, which is unlikely, you are currently hosed. If it could possibly be saved elsewhere (note I am talking physically saved, not logically saved (ie, what you see in Windows Explorer == logical)) you can use an undelete utility. It is a long shot, but you can try undelete tools; I would not hold out much hope.
One of the first things to do when you find source control is not working correctly, and you have altered files, is to make a backup of the folders you have worked on. A simple copy of the structure to a temp location is good enough. Then fix the source control issue and be prepared to consolidate your efforts. There are tools for this, if you are worried someone else might have edited files.
As for why VS did not warn you? The file was flagged as if it was not changed. VS noticed something after the save operation (size change, most likely) and warned you something was in error.
In the past, I have been burned by trying to second guess software, so I know the pain. That is why copy backup is a good practice when you notice something strange. This is less problematic in TFS, but I would imagine it might just overwrite a file that appeared to be checked in (read only flag set) as well.
I have a VS solution containing several projects. While debugging a particular project all the source files are locked by VS. I would like to unlock sources that the debugee doesn't have dependency on. Is there any way to do this within one solution?
UPDATE:
I'm using Win XP SP3 32bit. Visual Studio 2010, C#. Edit and Continue is enabled. The solution contains 6 projects (number in not important actually), 5 of them depend on the data access layer project which uses Entity Framework. None of the 5 have any mutual dependencies. They are WinForms and Console applications. I would like to be able to run one of the projects and make changes to others without stopping the first. The problem is starting and stopping the project take considerable amount of time.
The Edit and Continue feature is preventing you from editing files if the debugger hasn't stopped the program. The simple workaround is Debug + Break All, you should then be able to edit the files, your changes will be immediately effective provided your changes do not violate the restrictions imposed by E+C. This is the most efficient work flow.
The heavy-handed approach is to disable Edit and Continue. Tools + Options, Debugger, Edit and Continue, uncheck the Enable check box.
I don't think that there is a way to avoid that. While debugging Visual Studio lock all files to prevent any change on them, including those on other projects.
You can try to open the project which you are interested on with another Visual Studio instance to make changes to your files or open files singularly with another editor.
This doesn't quite answer the OP's question per se, but for anyone who has stumbled upon this page in the same (very frustrated) boat as I am, this might help.
The solution: start without debugging.
It was driving me absolutely crazy that Visual Studio would not let me edit files while the app was running. My typical workflow is:
Make some changes
Run the app to see the effects of those changes
Based on the results, make more changes, etc. etc.
The problem is Visual Studio was preventing me from step 3. It demands that you STOP running the app before you can even make any changes (including to a XAML file or adding a file to the project), which also means that you can't go back to the app to double-check something while you are actually programming it at the same time (which is how I work, bro).
Thank god I finally discovered if I run without debugging it doesn't impose this ridiculous limitation. It's still a pain in the butt if you actually need to debug something you have to re-run the app in debug mode, but it sure beats having to kill the app before it will even let you edit a file.