We have some legacy Classic ASP websites to maintain, and are wanting to use VS2010 to edit them, due to familiarity because of lots of .Net work.
I can open the website inside Visual Studio.
I can configure IIS to run the website based on the working folder used in VS2010.
I can configure VS2010 to automatically open my default browser pointing to the correct location, using the 'Base Url' setting in the Properties page.
What I CAN'T do, is work out where VS2010 stores this value, as there's no mention of it in the solution file that VS2010 has created, and as there's no project file for the website, there's nothing there too. Yet, when I close and re-open VS2010, it somehow retains this information.
This is important to me, as I need to be able to commit all files to our source control for use by other developers and, ideally, not have them worry about setting this value themselves.
So, the question is: Where does Visual Studio 2010 store the Base Url when working on Classic ASP websites?
I don't know where this is saved, but in tracking things like this down in the past I typically take the following approach:
Open Visual Studio and change this one setting
Apply the changes
Look for all files that have been modified in the last 1 minute in the project folders and in the Visual Studio folders
You can be sure there will be at least a few other files changed that are not relate to this, but it should narrow your search. You may want to re-close VS before searching too, but that will modify other files as well (making for a slightly larger pile of changed files to sift through).
If you still don't have it, search the registry (but I cannot imagine this would be where it was storing anything project specific).
EDIT:
Just created a new project and played with setting this property. It is definitely stored in the .suo (Solution User Options) file for the project, in the root of the project folder as #Lankymart suggested (and is a hidden file if you are not seeing it). It is not stored in plain-text.
You may be able to access it programmatically here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualstudio.shell.interop.ivspersistsolutionopts.loaduseroptions.aspx
As there are a ton of absolute path settings in these files, moving it to other environments is not really an option. I would suggest you are stuck with project start up documentation that lists these settings as part of the project setup process. I think any other solution is going to be equally annoying|fragile (or worse).
Not sure if there is another way to accomplish what setting the base URL does without managing from the Start Options panel - that is likely your last-best hope for a solution.
Related
This should be pretty simple, but I can't seem to get it. I have a setup project (VS2010) that packages a few dozen image files (along with my SQLite file) and copies them to the user's computer when the program is installed. As these are essentially "stock" images, it's ok if the user deletes them (there is functionality to do so from within the program.) However, after one or more of these images have been deleted, the next time the program starts it gives a "Windows installer" dialog box, and deletes all of the remaining data files!
What I think is happening is the program sees the missing files, assumes the installation has been corrupted, and tries to go into some kind of recovery/uninstall mode. I'd like to know how to indicate in the setup project that the files need to be installed, but may be removed by the user at any time.
I have tried several combinations of File properties, and nothing seems to do quite what I want, which is for my installer to put them where I say and never think about them again. Do I have to reinvent the wheel and do this through a custom action??
EDIT: Transitive and Vital had both been set to True. Setting them to False causes the program to re-add the deleted images back after it has been restarted! I'll probably go with a custom action if I don't get an answer.
When using a file association or advertised shortcut Windows Installer automatically checks if component key paths are missing. If a key path is not found, a repair is trigger to reinstall the component.
Most likely your installer repair process does something that removes the other files.
A solution is to not register your components with Windows Installer. This is done by using a null component GUID and it's not supported by Visual Studio setup projects (it is however supported by most of the other setup tools).
Another solution is to make sure that your image files are not key paths in their components. This is also not supported by Visual Studio.
If you want to use a setup authoring tool which offers more control, you can take a look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_installation_software
On the current project I am working on, there is, at the moment, a large churn of code, which means updating from source control can mean at times many csproj file changes. As we all know, VS2010 doesn't have a "Reload all" button, but you must reload each project and confirm each reload.
Is there a method where either the project is auto-reloaded or the IDE can detect this and ask for a solution reload?
Finally found a solution:
http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2011/01/27/reloading-all-projects-with-vscommands/
Quoting from the site:
Quite often I’ll find myself working
in situations where multiple projects
have changed, and Visual Studio asks
to reload them, one at a time. This
happens when I’m working a lot with
source control, and doing things like
switching branches, performing merges,
or just integrating upstream changes.
I have to click “Reload” a million
times for each project that changed on
disk, and it’s quite annoying. On top
of that, VS forgets which files I have
open, so every file that I was working
on gets closed.
I may be the last VS user to find out
about this, but a free lite version of
the VSCommands plugin is available on
the Visual Studio Gallery that does
just what I need – reload all changed
projects at once, preserving which
files I had open:
It's a pain, but the best option I've found is to Close the solution before Getting the latest source code.
If there are more than two changed projects, it is faster to manually unload&reload the entire solution than it is to Get and wait for it to unload&reload the affected projects only - reloading projects is achingly slow (even disregarding having to click the OK button for every project that changed).
(In my mind the real question is: Why does it ask that question at all??? If you Get the latest source code, there is absolutely no sane reason why you would want to only use part of it. It's like a petrol station attendant saying "You've bought some fuel. Would you like me to now actually put it in your car, or shall I just pour it out on the ground?")
Well, that doesn't work if your references paths changed in the csproj file and your using something like the sysinternals junction tool to change a symlink. E.g. tool switches D:\Projects symlink from D:\Baselines\1.0\Prjects to D:\Baselines\2.0\Projects , and because someone changed the folder structure between 1.0 and 2.0, your .csproj file suddenly points the dll path from ....\References\some.dll to ....\References\3rd-Party\some.dll . I know that is a special case, but happens (e.g. in my company).
There is an alternative solution though, one which I highly recommend as it has other benefits, too: the not-so-well-known VS 2010 Extension Solution Load Manager. It defers loading of Projects to the background, or until manually loaded, improving solution load time a lot for large solution files. It has this "reload solution" button in it's menu (unfortunatlely there seems to be no shortcut) which then reloads all solutions from scratch, skipping/backgroundloading the solutions you set. A Microsoft guy commented on his blog that they wanted to include something similar into VS 2010, but the feature didn't quite make it.
Sure, it may take longer then "just" one click and updating 100 documents, but it solved my problem of (relative) reference path changes, and gives a nice speed boost every time I open an at least medium sized solution.
Edit as of Oct 2013
VS2012 includes this functionality by default. At least the async loading stuff. The "don't load at all" functionality is unfortunately only possible by using manual "unload project" in VS2012. But as pr-project memory consumption did go down with VS2012, it's not that big of a deal anymore.
If you have checked the option "detect when file is changed outside the environment" in the "Documents" section of options, projects and files are reloaded when changed. It works for me when switching branches in git.
This is driving me crazy and has resulted in lost work (not much, at least).
Normally, when I edit a file in Visual Studio, it's supposed to automatically check that file out in source safe. On multi-project solutions (e.g., web app with class libraries), sometimes none of the files in one project would automatically get checked out, though exiting & reloading visual studio may fix that problem temporarily. Furthermore, project files are never automatically checked out. Whenever I add/remove code files, I have to remember to explicitly check out the project file as well (otherwise we'll have issues with code files not showing up in the solution explorer, or trying to load non-existing files).
We're using VS-2008 and VSS 2005. Do you have any idea how I might fix this? There are no more visual-studio updates/fixes on Microsoft Update.
You need to ensure the files are read-only, or VS won't be able to tell that they are version controlled (or, at least that's what it uses to determine it). You can tell VSS to set itself up so getting the latest version places the files RW on disk.
There may be other problems here, but that's what comes to mind first. My advice (that I took myself) is to migrate to SVN or an alternative. Losing work is unacceptable.
I have a VS2005 solution which contains a variety of projects (C++ DLLs, C++ static libraries, C# assemblies, C++ windows executables) that are combined in various ways to produce several executables. For some reason, every time I open the solution, VS2005 wants to check out one of the projects for editing. The project is not modified in any way, it's just checked out. If I configure VS2005 to prompt before checking out, I can cancel the auto-checkout during load with no ill effect that I can see. It may or may not be relevant, but the project it keeps checking out is cppunit version 1.12.0 (the static lib version). How can I stop this annoying behavior?
Other potentially relevant (or not) details:
Source control is Team Foundation Server (not Visual SourceSafe)
no .suo or .ncb files are checked in
the .vcproj and .vspscc files are being checked out
When I close the solution or shut down Visual Studio, I'm asked whether I want to save changes to the project. Answering yes results in no changes to the file (Kdiff3 compares my local file to the server version and reports"files are binary equal")
Attempting to check in the "modified" files results in a Visual Studio message saying "No Changes to Check In. All of the changes were either unmodified files or locks. The changes have been undone by the server"
As Charles and Graeme have hinted at, Visual Studio constantly make changes to user option files and such on the backed even if you don't make changes to the project directly.
I'm not sure what information is being stored but I do know that it happens. Common remedies is to not include the *.suo files. I also don't stored anything in the bin or obj folders in sauce control as this can have a similar effect as your talking about (if you build). (Checks out the project upon a build. Thought this does take an action to happen).
Overall it is unavoidable. It is just how VS2005, 2008 work.
Does this answer your question?
Regards,
Frank
There are two reasons I've encountered that cause this behavior.
The first is old source control bindings. If you have a project that used to be managed by another source control tool, it might have leftover bindings in the project file. Open the project file, and change the following settings from something like this:
SccProjectName="$/Team/Platform/Projects/MyProject"
SccAuxPath="http://teamFoundationServer.example.com:8080"
SccLocalPath="."
SccProvider="{88888888-4444-4444-4444-BBBBBBBBBBBB}"
to this:
SccProjectName="SAK"
SccAuxPath="SAK"
SccLocalPath="SAK"
SccProvider="SAK"
Different project types are defined in different ways. The above example is from a .vcproj, C# projects are in XML, VB looks like something else, but the meanings are the same. Simply set all four values to the constant string "SAK" and Visual Studio will automatically handle source control. See Alin Constantin's blog for details.
I haven't yet discovered the root of the other reason, but the project that is giving me trouble is also CppUnit 1.12.0! I'll keep digging and post my findings.
John
Have you put a .suo or .ncb file into source control perhaps?
Have you tried closing VS2005 after it checks out cppunit and then seeing if any changes were made?
I often encountered something like this with Web App solutions where the project file wasn't actually saved until you closed studio down and reopened it.
Just to clarify, I'm assuming that you mean Visual SourceSafe2005 is causing the problem, not Visual Studio. (FYI, Visual SourceSafe is usually abbreviated VSS.)
I've experienced this issue with VSS before. I think the limitation is really fundamental to Visual SourceSafe: it's just not that good of a product and I would move to something else if it's a decision you can influence.
If you can move to something else, I recommend Subversion for a small or medium-sized project. It's free, and does not use the pessimistic locking mechanism that Visual SourceSafe uses by default. There's an excellent Visual Studio add-on called VisualSVN that will give you the same functionality in the IDE (seeing what files have changed, etc.) that you get out of the box with VSS.
If you cannot change source control systems, I believe Visual SourceSafe has a mode called "non-exclusive checkouts" or something like that that uses the optimistic locking that Subversion and other source control systems use. Try setting that option at least for the files that are obviously not being changed and see if that resolves the issue.
I get this a lot when one of the projects in the the solution has source control information with path information that is not the same in source control as on your workstation. When VS opens the project it will automatically attempt to check out the project in question and
To fix it, you're best off having everyone who uses the project remove their local copies and do "get latest version..." to grab what is in your source control database.
you can also check the .sln file and look in the GlobalScxtion(SourceCodeControl) area for each project's information and see if the relative path is not how you have the projects stored on your workstation - though manually changing this file vs. doing a "Get Latest Version..." is much more likely to cause problems for the other developers who use the solution as well.
Your cppunit project is probably automatically creating one or more additional files when the project first loads, and then adding those files to the project. Or else one of the project's properties is being changed or incremented on load.
If you go ahead and check the project in, does it check itself out again next time you load it? Or does checking it in fix the problem for awhile?
Very often this sort of behavior is caused by VS trying to update source control bindings.
Graeme is correct, VS will not save project or solution files until you close VS.
I would let VS check the files out, then close VS, then diff them.
I just wonder what the best approach is to have multiple users work on a Project in Visual Studio 2005 Professional.
We got a Solution with multiple Class Libraries, but when everyone opens the solution, we keep getting the "X was modified, Reload/Discard?" prompt all the time. Just opening one project is an obvious alternative, but I find it harder to use as you can't just see some of the other classes in other projects that way.
Are there any Guidelines for Team Development with VS2005 Pro?
Edit: Thanks. The current environment is a bit limited in the sense there is only 1 PC with RDP Connection, but that will change in the future. Marking the first answer as Accepted, but they are all good :)
What you need is source control.
You should definitely not open the same files over the network on multiple machines. For one thing, Visual Studio has safeguards in place to prevent you from modifying certain files during a build, but it has none of that that will prevent others from modifying the same files over the network.
By setting up source control, each developer will have a separate copy of the files locally on his or her developer machine, and periodically communicate with the source control system to check in/commit changes. After that, other developers can ask for the latest updates when they're ready to retrieve them.
Use source control to keep a central repository of all your code. Then each user checks out their own copy of the source code and works locally. Then submits only the code that changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control
A number of people have recommended using source control and I totally agree. However you also need do the following.
Exclude your personal options files from the repository (eg your .suo files)
Exclude your App.config files from the repository. - Not entirely but you need to have a Template.App.config. You commit that instead, and only copy your App.config into the Template.App.config when you make structural changes. That was each user has their own individual config for testing.
There are probably some other files worth excluding (obj directories and so forth) but thats all I can think of right now.
Peter
This might sound snide, but if you're opening up the solution from a shared location then you're doing something wrong. If that's the case then you should start using source control (something like Subversion) and have everyone check out a copy of the project to work on.
However if you're already using source control, then it might be a symptom of having the wrong things checked in. I find that you only need the sln, and the vcproj under source control.
Otherwise I don't know...
You should definitely, definitely be working with source control!
This will help stop the collisions that are occurring. Also, if you are making changes to the shared projects this often that it is a problem, then also ensure that all code is tested before getting checked in (otherwise they may bust someone else's build), but make sure they check in often (or time gained from not dealing with prompts will be lost in merging conflicts) :)