I have a web project which references a number of other projects, and when this web project is compiled, I'm getting the standard DLLs as expected for the project and others, but in addition there are 'duplicate' DLLs for all those projects with my computer name appended to the end:
MyServices.dll (and .pdb)
MyServices-computerName.dll (and .pdb)
When I run the website, I'm getting errors that the file could not be found, and that the DLL's manifest doesn't match the executable.
I tried cleaning the build, wiping everything and re-getting from source control, but they keep coming back.
If I manually delete them, the site runs fine, but they come back when I build.
this turned out to be a consequence of the source folder being synced with SkyDrive. During build, many changes are made to the dlls which essentially makes it look like multiple sources are updating the same files, so SkyDrive appends the computer name to the end of the files to preserve changes made from 'different' sources.
Skydrive application sync is creating multiple copies of files - Microsoft Community
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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
Here's my specific scenario: Using VS2010, Pex and TFS2008, generated moles files are getting automatically added to source-control (TFS).
Pex adds a "project_name.moles" file to your test project and then autogenerates 3 files at build time: project_name.Designer.cs, project_name.Moles.dll, and project_name.Moles.xml. I want to keep the *.moles files in TFS (it's source code) but I don't want the 3 generated files to be in TFS (they are still part of the project, but they are generated when first built on a new system).
There are two reasons I need this behavior:
1. It's not a good idea to store generated code in source-control (let's not debate the merits of that here).
2. Specially, the DLL file is BAD because every time someone builds, all moles files are regenerated and thus all files are checked-out and DLL files are checked-out EXCLUSIVELY (non-mergable) and so other people can no longer build on their local box.
The Pex/Moles team are working on this but the solution is still likely several months away.
Is there a csproj property that can be assigned to these project files so that they are in the project but not managed by version control? I don't mind hand-editing the csproj file.
Moles will not be adding any files to the project in the next version (v0.94). It will use MSBuild to generate the assemblies on demand.
I think it depends more on the version control tool than Visual Studio, as usually you can set up some kind of filters in your version control configuration in order to exclude some files/paths.
E.g. if you use Mercurial/Hg, you can (and should) edit your repository .hgignore file and specify e.g. to exclude all *.moles files and the whole sub-tree MolesAssemblies\*. I guess other version control systems have similar options.
This has to do with source control, I'm using VSS and the Visual Studio 2008 plugin. When the DLL of a referenced project gets included in a project (and checked into VSS), on the next build it will fail because those files aren't checked out as part of the build process and will be read only.
I could exclude the entire bin folder and all dlls, but that is where I put my static dlls (ie. the ones that aren't rebuilt as part of the solution) and interestingly, Visual Studio treats dlls other than outputs of other products as excluded files just fine.
In VS2005, the VSS plug in didn't automatically add the output of referenced projects as files pending check in, but in VS2008, it does.
Anyone run into this issue or find a work around?
It's better to not check in the bin folders at all. Move the dependencies to a common lib folder, and reference them from there. That will make sure they're copied into the bin folder. You can then explicitly check in this lib folder.
Other files/folders to avoid checking are the obj directory and the ncb file. I'm not sure how "smart" the VSS integration is in this case.
(I know I am using Visual Source Safe, I do not have a choice because it comes with the MSDN Subscription license and my company does not want to buy a third party source control solution....)
I have a VS 2005 solution with 3 C# class library projects, 2 ASP.NET web site projects and one ASP.NET web service project that is stored in a Visual Source Safe database. Some of the projects reference a common library DLLs that handle common taskes.
When a new person sets ups the solution on their workstation and build it for the first time, it checks out the common library DLLs in the bin folder of the ASP.NET web site and web service projects. When another developer that is currently working on the project tries to build, they receive a "file excludely checked out by other user" message.
VS 2005 does not display the check mark next to the DLL that is causing the headache.
Is there a way to prevent this from happenning?
Why do you have the bin folder checked into SourceSafe? On projects I've worked on, the third party dlls were checked into a separate folder (maybe called ExternalLibraries or ThirdParty) at the same level as the solution file. The compile process would be set up to copy the dlls into the bin folder. This could be handled with .refresh files, or with a pre- or post-build step. This way, VisualStudio/SourceSafe won't see the files as having been updated, and won't try to check them out.
If the compile is already pulling the files in due to them being dependencies, I'd suggest removing the bin folder from VSS. This is not the same as an "Exclude folder from project" which hides the folder from VS05 when compiling (and gives you the compile error you mentioned.)
If the third party dlls aren't going to change, another option is to make those files read-only in VSS. This way, no users will be able to check out the files. (To mark the files read-only, you will need to change the permissions from the VSS management tool; the developer's tool doesn't have that feature.)
As for why it happens, I don't believe VSS checks the binary version numbers - it is only concerned with modify file date. If a new developer pulls all the code out, all files (including binaries) will have the current date as the modify date. This may be causing the unnecessary checkouts.
Regarding your later comments - I'm not sure why VS05 wouldn't see the files as under source control but the VSS UI does. I suspect it has to do with the .vss files (and similar) that are in that folder. In this case, VS05 is incorrect.
Not sure if this is the problem or the best fix, but if you update every developer's machine so that they have the same latest versions of the common DLLs installed, this shouldn't keep happening. I think VSS checks out the DLLs in the \bin folder if the version referenced by the project file doesn't match the version installed on the developer's machine.
#Pedro:
In the VS 2005 IDE inteface, it does not indicated that the \bin folder is in VSS. When I look at the project in the VSS UI, it shows that is checked out to the user who did the latest build on their workstation.
If I use the "Exclude folder from project" option, it will cause the compiler to throw "reference not found" errors.
In my solution structure, the class library project creates a reference to the third party DLLs using the "Add Reference" command. Then I set a project reference to the class librarys in my ASP,NET web site and web service projects (using the web site project template). Because the class library has a dependency on the third party DLLs, they are copyed in the \bin folder.
How do I set a file to read-only through the VSS UI?
I'm trying to create a DLL using a Dataset.XSD file to access my website's VistaDB database. The DLL develops and builds fine but I need to build the DLL once and then change the "path" of the database in the all the Website projects that finally references the dll (different databases and therefor database paths for each website that references the dll in it's bin folder).
I can't get the ConfigurationManager.ConnectionString("myconstr").ConnectionString to stay in my DLL project. As soon as I save it - it reverts back to whatever the Dataset.XSD file wants it to be (the database connectionstring that I developed it against).
I figured out that if I just open it up in notepad, make the changes, and then build it works like it should. It's kind of a pain in the butt to do this every time I make a changes to the XSD file though but it's better than nothing, I guess.