I'm currently using Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Assist X to do rename refactorings in managed C++ code. For small codebases or renaming items which are not used very often in the code it works great.
It's almost impossible to rename an item which is used frequently in a large codebase because Visual Assist keeps every changed file open and unsaved. This means if there are a lot of files open the next file takes even longer to be opened.
Since I'm using version control this does not make sense to me because I could revert all the changes if something went wrong.
Is there a way to do that refactoring without keeping files open? Maybe also with another VS extension? I did not find any information about so far...
For example:
I have a solution with about 100 projects, if I rename a class which is used frequently Visual Assist X's execution of renaming takes about 30 minutes or more. It opens every file which must be changed. As longer the renaming runs, the more files are open in VS and the more longer it takes to open another file...
At least there is a workaround.
When I have too many tabs open, I close them via Window / Windows ... and there Ctrl+A, de-selecting one or two needed windows and then "Close Window(s)".
Additionally I use File / Save All excessively. I have it mapped to Ctrl+Shift+S but I'm not sure if this is standard.
Related
Coming from a Unix background and used to working with the Makefileto build stuff, I now have to find my way through the maze of twisty little passages known as Visual Studio 2017.
Basically: I just want to save a solution that I've imported into Visual Studio 2017 (e.g. to move it to another machine) to some sensible structure. I am unable to figure out how to do that!
The solution I work with comes from GitHub and the package is about 590 Kbyte and consists of 32 files. (I downloaded the .zip and unpacked it, then opened in the IDE by clicking on the .sln-file.
After running it (unchanged) in Visual Studio, it has ballooned to 4 Mbyte and 134 files. Obviously a lot of temporary files has been created as a result of me running it. Making a copy of this bloated directory structure is not practical - and some other way (i.e. the method for saving used by the guy who shared his solution on GitHub) must exist.
I want to save it with all those temporary files removed.
There is Build » Clean Solution – but it does not seem to get get rid of the temporary files.
I've also tried: File » Save all. I do no understand how this commend is supposed to work. It does not ask where to save tings, but just says "Item(s) saved" at the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Looking at things in the file system, I am unable to located anything saved. To me, it looks like this command does nothing.
I've searched, but so far found nothing for Visual Studio 2017 (recipes for older versions does not seem to work anymore.)
Saving a solution is something developers do a lot, so there must be something obvious I've missed.
There is not really the concept of "Save As..." for a solution. If you want to copy the whole solution elsewhere you would usually just copy the whole folder it's in to somewhere else.
The reasons you have many extra files are:
There will be a .git sub-folder which contains the Git repository. If you don't need to retain any link to this, you can delete / avoid copying this. Depending on how much history is in the Git repo this folder can even be much larger than the solution itself.
VS will create a .vs sub-folder for various housekeeping activities; you can usually avoid copying this.
In each project's folder, after you've built the solution, there will be obj and bin sub-folders. These are recreated as needed at build time and are not needed for a copy.
If you copy everything ignoring the above, you will probably find the size of the target is more as you were expecting.
I'm in the process of building a program that has several external libraries and extensions outside of the main program files. My projects total size is 134.2 MB. I would like to make a portable version of it with Turbo Studio, but I face one glaring problem; After capturing the files and building the project I'm left with a 138.9MB executable. The program does run, but I don't want it to be so bloated.
I would like to bundle the bulk of the data as a separate .dat payload (or equivalent) but I can't seem to find any means of doing this with Turbo Studio. VMware ThinApp and Cameyo both do this automatically after the project exceeds a certain size, but it would appear that Turbo Studio doesn't.
Any help with is greatly appreciated.
There was a hack I had discovered some time ago that did exactly what you were asking.
It appears that the site that described it is not online anymore so read on.
Install your application while monitoring with TurboStudio.
If there are multiple entry points (e.g., a suite like office may have
shortcuts for excel, word etc) then make sure there are shortcuts for those entry points in the Start Menu. If there are not, then click Start, right click on All Programs, then Open All Users. Make sure you create in that folder shortcuts for all your desired entry points (e.g., one shortcut for word, one for excel etc.)
Capture and Diff with TurboStudio. Set your virtualization settings as desired.
Click Output File-->Browse, and select "All files(.)" in the Save as type list. Then enter a filename with the extension .dat
Build your app. You will now get a .dat file instead of an .exe
In the next step you must use ExeBuilder.exe. This file was originally hosted in csgotwisted.com. Do a google search for "2 utilities for spoon studio exebuilder" and it will most likely be the first result. Unfortunately, the link is dead now when I click it. So I uploaded the file to NitroFlare. You can find it here. Put it in the same folder as the .dat file and run it. It will create a shortcut with your executable. Sometimes it misses the icon, but it gives you the option to locate it manually.
I use TurboStudio often and I have found this way to be the most quick and reliable in allowing me to generate small executables and storing the virtual filesystem and registry in a .dat file. In addition, it has the advantage that it can get you multiple entry points and not only one, just like Thinapp does.
Does it use modification timestamp or/and does it check whether the actual content has changed (e.g. by comparing the checksum)?
Edit: I need to know this since I use Git for source control and often change branches. It appears that sometimes even if I change the branch back and force (e.g. from develop to master and then back to develop), the VS rebuilds half of the sources files. I wonder why this happens and why does it happen sometimes and does not happen the other times.
Since Visual Studio is a closed-source project, I bet only developers would be able to give a definite answer on how exactly does it work. However, for my purposes it is enough to test some scenarios.
I have tested it with a small solution and a couple of files in it (one header and two source files). Test results bring to the following conclusion. Visual Studio looks for modification date and time. Even if the file content is the same - it compiles this file and also any other files that include it. If the modification date and time are the same - it won't recompile it even if the content is different. Visual Studio ignores creation and access dates and times.
I'm guessing it uses FileSystemWatcher on the project directories and linked files (if any), just because it's the right way to do this kind of thing.
Some googling finds for more about this class (or just look it up yourself):
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/use-the-net-filesystemwatcher-object-to-monitor-directory-changes-in-c/6165137
http://www.dotnetperls.com/filesystemwatcher
Of course when the source file is open, it's content by the time of editing, as wel as any user changes (even not saved) are loaded in the RAM, but it doesn't compare it to disk content (that'd be too slow), it listens to a system event when the system tells it the file changed.
Update:
Probably not that class itslf, but the Win32 version of it, you know most of the system related .NET functionality classes are just Win32 wrappers.
From this StackOverflow answer: How does FileSystemWatcher work on another computers directory?
I think it wraps this API (not sure): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365465.aspx
Update 2:
This is Microsoft's approach to monitor file changes:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/chzww271(v=vs.80).aspx
Update 3
This is an old answer, and it was mentioned above that it was a guess, as Visual Studio is closed source as mentioned in other answers. It's worth mentioning that the accepted answer suggests Visual Studio looks for file modification dates instead, which suggests it doesn't use the approach guessed in this very answer, and that it was wrong.
I hope the reader didn't mind the effort given to rationalize possibilities in this answer (causing reader discomfort or down votes). Keeping it for archival reason only.
Our company won a web project from a new client. Their old vendor basically zipped up the code (C#/ASP.NET, including an enormous number of media files) and FTPed it to us and is no longer answering phone calls/supporting it in any way. There's no solution file, no project files, just code.
So I created an empty project locally and moved it to a network path and moved their code inside it because I don't even have enough space to host it locally. Their architecture is suspect, but I need to get it back up and running ASAP so I don't have time to reconsider that at the moment. I opened the project I created, selected "show all files" and attempted to include all of the paths (both media files and code paths) and the application hung. One of the media folders has something like 65,000 files in it. Do I even need to include this?
Regardless, it seems like doing "Include in Project" is taking forever, I've spent hours wrestling with it, trying to do one folder at a time...but often it's just hanging and I have to kill the process. Is there a faster way to deal with this? I tried editing the project file directly but including this media folder made the solution take absolutely forever to load.
Any general suggestions on how to approach this situation?
as long there is no direct reference you don't need to include media files into the project.
I bet those files are just loaded runtime from a procedure. To make sure make a full search for the media folder in the sources.
Imho get just the files to a local store, create a solution, and then add all resources and sources. If needed you can copy the media files later again into the project.
I had the same problem with local files. I probably killed VS2010 three times since it would always seem to lock up. I then recreated the folder structure, but not with the correct name, then save the project, open it with a text editor and change the names to the actual structure. Finally use "Add > Existing Item". It's still slow, but a bit faster.
It's not hanging - if you leave it long enough it will finish. Know what you mean though - it took half a day to include dojo on one of my projects.
You may want to try SharpDevelop to include large folders into your projects - it seems much, much faster than visual studio when given this task. You can then just re-open the project in vs. Hope this helps.
In an earlier question, I've found out that sadly Solution Folders are not real folders inside a directory.
I wonder if there is an AddOn or Macro that adds this functionality? i.e. when I create a Solution Folder, it created a real folder. When I Create a new Item (Right Click => Add => New Item) it automatically moves them into that folder, removing causes it to delete it from disk (after asking) etc.
This is for Visual Studio 2005, although we might upgrade to 2008 in a few months.
As of now, this doesn't seem to be possible in either VS 2005, 2008 and 2010 and there is no AddIn for this.
I too thought it was a strange idea. However it can be a useful tool to logically group projects in solutions without necessarily moving around folders in the file system.
I suspect you need this for revision control tool. In that case Look at AnkhSVN.
Maybe what you want is to add files to a solution folder as «links», i.e., keeping the files where they are but giving them a different organization inside the solution.
(when you add an existing file to a solution folder or to a normal project folder, if it is in a different corresponding physical folder, the file is copied).
It usually stays unnoticed, an option in the «Add > Existing Item ...» dialog where you can choose "Add As Link", instead of the "Add".
This allows to share files amongst projects, or, simply, organize them differently.
What I oftem miss is the possibility to add "virtual" folders inside a project, for organizational purposes, without breaking the namespace/folder best-practice.
Can't really get the point you want to add this function.
Sometimes you want to know if it can do this , however, the answer may be no. But it is not necessary means you can't achieve your original goal, there still a few ways to work around it without this.
Additionally, VS solution suppose to be the shortcut of your project settings and should not been included in any hard-code, the solutions may be various between the PCs and IDE envrionment.
I didn't really use VS2005 much, but have been using VS2008 for the past year.
It has a tick box for creating a solution folder when you create a new solution/project.
If you then use the "Solution Explorer" window you can create and manipulate folders and class files within them. This will actually create new directories that match.
Deletion of files from within the Solution Explorer will also delete the actual files from disk.