Visual Studio 2010 - Debugging / Build Problems - visual-studio-2010

I am using Visual Studio Professional 2010 and the Team Foundation Server Express (beta). My VS Project (C#.Net / WPF) has been migrated from VS 2008 (without TFS) to VS 2010 (with TFS).
Whenever I apply changes to my code and try to debug my application, I get messages like This breakpoint will not be hit. (in german: Der Haltepunkt wird momentan nicht erreicht. Der Quellcode weist Unterschiede zur Originalversion auf.) and the project is started using the old executable version (the one with the last successful build). No errors occure, the code is OK, but the changes are not applied either.
When I manually cleanup and rebuild my project, everything works quite fine - but there has to be a fix for this issue?
Edit: I just added a new project to my VS solution and checked it in on the TFS Server. Using this new project the problem does not occure. Even when I add the same dependencies I used in the project mentioned above, the debugging and building of the new project works fine without the errors mentioned above.
Maybe this information helps you to lead me to a solution.

It's not clear whether existing answers are not sufficient. I can't know exactly what's causing your problem; but, I can detail some places this potentially comes up.
The first area that I commonly see this is when a project references an assembly directly. You can create a project that creates an assembly. Another project might use that assembly and you can reference by assembly directly (and not add a reference to the "project"). This disconnects VS from really knowing it needs to "build" that referenced assembly first and it will sometimes get out of sync with the debugging symbols (PDB). You can tell if a project has been referenced or an assembly has been referenced in the properties of the reference (expand References in Solution Explorer, right-click a reference, and select Properties). A referenced project will not have a Specific Version property, while an assembly reference will. You can sometimes also tell from Project\Project Dependencies. If you have a reference to an assembly generated by another project but that project isn't a dependency in Project Dependencies, it might be an assembly reference. To fix this, you can usually just delete the reference and add a reference to the project.
I've also find that sometimes breakpoints confuses the debugger. If I have many breakpoints or they've been kicking around a long time, the debugger sometimes does some weird things. If I delete all the existing break points (Debug/Delete all breakpoints) and re-apply them the debugger is usually much happier.

You can find the answer here. The assemblies might be in GAC or a project or some projects need to be rebuild to generate the pdb files again, which are used for debugging. If you don't choose to rebuild it might use the old pdb files.

My guess is that you are putting breaking points somewhere your program can't access them.
Ex:
const int x = 5;
if(this.x == 1)
//do sth <--- breakpoint here

If you are running a mixed mode application (unmanaged native C++ & managed C#), make sure to set Enable unmanaged code debugging in your C# application's Properties window.

You have to rebuild, there isn't an easier way around it.
The program database files (PDB) need to be recreated. You should also have your configuration setting set to debug.
Also the first answer to this question must be of help as well.

This happened to me when I started VS as an admin, and it also happened to me when the project is set to a different architecture than a DLL that I used in this project.

Related

Visual Studio cannot find reference

The problem
Suddenly, Visual Studio (2015 RC) started throwing error CS7069 in my face a lot. It states
Reference to type '...' claims it is defined in '<assembly>', but it could not be found.
Yet VS's functionality "Goto reference" did function and squigglies weren't consistently present, so I figured something weird was going on.
How I created the problem
It started when I was refactoring/splitting a project. I was moving .cs files from one project to a new one. Types that I moved to the new project couldn't be found anymore by the compilation process of a project that referenced both projects.
What I tried
I verified that the relevant assembly was indeed referenced, present and had the type with public modifier. I rebuilt it, checked version numbers (of target frameworks etc), removed the relevant reference and re-added it, cleaned solutions and projects, checked configuration manager settings, removed all VS's temporary files and whatnot, and I couldn't fix the bug for 4 days. 4 long days, might I add.
Googling didn't result in anything either, so I hope that the next poor fellow who made the same mistake as I did finds this page, as I finally found out what was going on:
I had two projects with identical assembly names...
Renaming the new assembly in its properties menu made all errors vanish.
Fixed bug on Visual Studio 2015.
Go to Tools menu, Options, Debugging, General: Check: "Use the legacy C# and VB expression evaluators"
Try to clean/rebuild the project. It helped me.
Also try to remove all of the *.suo and *.user files in your solution folder
http://blog.galasoft.ch/posts/2014/01/quick-tip-what-to-do-when-visual-studio-freaks-out-and-everything-is-red/
I had this problem and it turned out I had the wrong build configuration selected. The reference projects and the project I was building were not selected for that build configuration. Simple to fix, but not something I looked at for a while.

Visual Studio breakpoints only work on second debug attempt

I have a VS 2010 solution with a web application project, and several class library projects to which the web app project has project references. When I am trying to debug the code for one of the class library projects through the F5 debug build process, the Modules window normally fails to load the symbols for the DLL in question, or if it does, the breakpoints are ignored anyway. However, on the second attempt at an F5 debug build, the breakpoints usually are recognized, and the code will halt in the required location.
I have tried ALL sorts to fix this issue - all the usual solution cleaning business, repeating the referencing procedure. I didn't see this issue until I upgraded to VS 2010, after which I rebuilt a new VS2010 solution from existing projects. I am beginning to think this is some sort of timing bug in 2010, as I am making no changes between the first and second attempt - it's as though VS 2010 is disregarding the dependendencies in the build configuration, and starting the web app build before the PDB for the class library is ready, or before it can locate the PDB for the class library.
Has anybody seen similar behaviour in VS2010? As you can imagine it is adding considerable amounts of 'productivity killing' time to my debugging, having to build everything 2 or 3 times just to get the breakpoints to be recognized.
Thanks if you can advise.
Try erasing the bin and obj folders between runs. does it help?
I have similar issues with a web server which does not get changes made to the configuration file on VS2010.

Break point not working and modules not loading dll files in VS 2010

I am using VS 2010 professional [64bit - Windows 7] and in my solutions, i have 3 class library project and 1 wcf service projects are there. All these dll's are refereneced in my WPF applications. For the last 1 year, it was working fine and i was able to debug the all the referenced projects. But from yesterday itself, debug is not working all of a sudden.
When I put a break point on a class in the wcf project, it says breakpoints cannot hit as the source file is different from....etc.
When I checked in the Debug --> Windows ---> Modules window, all those projects dlls are not seen there and says no pdb files are available ???
But in the WPF bin\Debug folder, i have all the referenced dlls and their pdb are ther.
What could be the problem ?
Even I am not able to debugg the wpf project as well. For getting break point or debug, each time i have to clean the solution or project then rebuild it again. Then i will be able to debug the WPF project.
In the case of referenced dlls, I removed the dlls and added the new compiled dll again and copied that pdb files to the wpf project exe folder. Still no use !!!!
I have changed the options in the Debug and Options [disabling and enabling the Just my code options etc]. But still it is not working.
This is not only my problem. One of my colleague also have this problem we took the whole latest solution code from TFS. SO I changed the Local code path to a new folder and took the latest code from TFS again. Still the problem exists !!
I am able to run the application. But debug is not working. In the WPF project, all those dlls are referenced properly.
Can anyone help us ???
I guess I don't have enough points to comment to ask specifics, so this may or may not solve your problem but I'll take a crack at it. Also, there appear to be other questions about this. So I would check those out first to see if they will help.
This question was solved by adding configuration to tell the program which version of the framework to use during debugging.
Why doesn't VS2010 debugger stop at my breakpoints?
Why does Visual Studio 2008 skip over my break points?
If those don't help, I'll give it a go.
When I put a break point on a class in the wcf project, it says breakpoints cannot hit as the source file is different from....etc.
This sounds like it could be one of the following issues:
Remote debugging and Visual Studio does not know where to load the symbols from or they are out-of-date
Need to clean and rebuild (which you seem to be doing)
The server you are running your WCF service on is not getting the updated DLLs and PDB files. If it's IIS Express, try killing the process between builds.
Also, make sure you are building in Debug mode and not Release mode. While building Release mode will generate the PDB files if it's set to do so which will allow you to debug an application, the code may be optimized as well which can cause breakpoints to be missed.

Visual Studio 2010 randomly says the command line changed, and rebuilds

Visual Studio sometimes decides to rebuild my entire huge project because of one small change. I turned build logging up to Diagnostic to see what was the problem, and here's what I'm seeing:
< Bunch of spam >
Outputs for C:\<snip>\PRECOMPILEDHEADERS.CPP:
C:\<snip>\PRECOMPILEDHEADERS.OBJ
All outputs are up-to-date.
Forcing rebuild of all source files due to a change in the command line
... and then it rebuilds my precompiled headers, then everything else.
This happens when I change a single .cpp or .h file inside the project. I'm not changing anything in the project settings. It also doesn't happen all the time for the same change; it's random.
Any ideas on what's going on here? Where can I get more information? I tried enabling debugging via the description in http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vsproject/archive/2009/07/21/enable-c-project-system-logging.aspx but it didn't give any more information. I can't figure out where this "Forcing rebuild of all source files due to a change in the command line" is coming from. It's not in any of the factory MSBuild files.
Some other info: it's a C++/CLI dll project that links a lot of other projects, including C#, native c++, and other C++/CLI dll's. I tried removing all the C# projects from the dependencies since those tend to cause problems, but that didn't change it. I've googled that specific string, but my situation doesn't match that of any of the other people reporting it. (One was using Intel C++, another was MSBuild from the command line and changing the case. I'm hitting build solution from within Visual Studio itself).
Edit to explain common fixes I've tried:
I've tried building only the project. Does the same thing.
I'm not including any .h files that don't exist.
I've deleted the bin/object folders and rebuilt from scratch. This usually makes it go away for a couple builds, but then it comes right back.
Edit #2:
Found something suspicious earlier in the log:
3>Using "ResolveNonMSBuildProjectOutput" task from assembly "Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a".
3>Task "ResolveNonMSBuildProjectOutput"
3> Resolving project reference "..\..\..\..\CommonCore\VS2010\Project1\Project1.vcxproj".
3> Project reference "..\..\..\..\CommonCore\VS2010\Project1\Project1.vcxproj" has not been resolved.
This is repeated for several of my projects... I'm gonna chase that down and see if maybe it's a problem with the project reference hint paths.
Ok, it's an old thread, but I encountered the same problem recently.
My solution was to disable the precompiled headers - now a simple change in one sourcefile won't lead into a "rebuild" any more.
I have had the same problem with Visual Studio 2012 recently. I'm on Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2012 Professional (2012.2) building C++ projects. It's worth noting that I recently migrated the solution from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2012.
One of the C++ projects (an executable with a DLL project as a reference) was rebuilding every time one of its compilation units was changed, e.g. simply saving main.cpp would cause all compilation units (including the pre-compiled header) to rebuild. I spotted the the following message in the build logs:
Forcing rebuild of all source files due to a change in the command line since the last build.
I turned build log file verbosity to Diagnostic (Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run) and compared the log files from a clean build and a build after one compilation unit has been changed (which forced a full rebuild). I noticed that:
"Path" had changed from one build to the next (";C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\VsGraphics" seems to have been tacked on the end)
there was a difference in TaskTracker.exe command lines to do with CancelEvents
there was a warning about OutputPath not being set
I pulled my hair out.
I eventually resorted to recreating the offending project from scratch rather than relying on the project that was automatically generated during the migration process from 2008 to 2012. It seems to be behaving as expected now.
I did three things, and the problem seems to have gone away. I'm trying to narrow it down a little but I figured I'd go ahead and post them:
Deleted and re-added all the references and project references
Fixed one of my projects that wasn't setting the .NET framework target to 3.5 to match the rest of my solution (I was getting away with it because the project didn't use .NET anyway)
Set "Copy Local Satellite Assemblies" to false for all references including System ones.
Beware that some or all of this stuff might be voodoo...

What do you do about references when unloading a project in Visual Studio?

When you unload a project in Visual Studio, any referencing projects get warning triangles on their reference to the unloaded project. I've written myself a macro to do clever stuff (detect add/remove of project and transform any references from-to file/project dependency), but I can't believe that I'm not missing something much simpler. How can the unload function be any use if I have to go around manually changing references (and it breaks the 'personal solutions/shared projects' team development paradigm).
(This question is related to answers to this question about structuring large solutions in Visual Studio - some answers mentioned having solutions with lots of projects, but 'unloading' unused projects to improve performance.)
For my projects, I create an assemblies folder which the projects automatically copy into from a set location to which other projects copy builds.
Post-build for referenced assembly's project:
if not exist "C:\builds\Project1" md "C:\builds\Project1\"
copy "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).*" "C:\builds\Project1\"
Pre-build for referencing projects:
if exist "c:\builds\Project1\" copy "c:\builds\Project1*.*" "$(ProjectDir)assemblies"
The project file points to its assemblies subfolder for references so even if the source projects are unloaded from the solution, the last-built assemblies will be used without the performance problems of having the whole project in memory while developing.
What are the advantages of having projects in the same solution if you use file references?
If your app.exe uses utils.dll and you change the code for utils.dll, then if it's in the same solution VS will notice the dependency and recompile both. If it's not in the solution you'll have to jump out, recompile utils.dll seperately, then jump back in and recompile app.exe.
This becomes either more or less important depending on how many other dll's your exe is referencing, and how often they change (in team environments shared dll's change often in my experience).
There is also the side effect that if you have 100 projects in VS it will take a long time to process them all just to figure out if they need recompiling or not.
Unloading projects is meant to be a temporary action so you can edit the actual project file as XML (text). If you want to completely remove a project from your solution, you should use the "Remove" menu option, which will take care of removing any references to that project.
One advantage to using project references is that it allows you to easily debug through the code. It also automatically ensures that you are using the correct configuration build (ie, if you are building in "Debug" mode it will use the Debug version of the assembly). That being said, you loose some determinisim about which version/build of the dependent project you will pick up - project references mean you always use the latest.
Yes, for Visual Studio to determine build dependencies it must be able to see and build all of the projects which would mean project references.
I've just had a eureka moment reading through MSDN doc on structuring solutions and projects.
What I hadn't noticed is that in a multi-project solution, the context menu in the Solution Explorer proposes a Project Dependencies popup. Here you can define the project dependencies manually, if you haven't defined them by project references between projects.
See here (MSDN link, so will self destruct after a few weeks)

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