Whenever I open a new (web) project in VS 2010 the default build configuration is set to "Active (Debug)". I read somewhere that if I upload my project like this to the server it would have a slight affect on performance (is this true?), so I have to manually go to properties and change it in the build tab to release. Is there any way to tell VS 2010 to open every new project in 'release' configuration?
I believe the build configurations are listed alphabetically, and the first one is always selected when starting a new project.
Since Debug and Release configurations are always added by default, you'll always get Debug selected unfortunately.
You would be better off performing a Publish operation when you want to deploy, as this will not only build in Release (or any configuration you wish), but also will only produce the files that are required by the application. You can publish to a local folder to then upload to a remote server.
Yes, it is true that dll's built in debug mode will not perform as efficiently as dll's built in release mode. A debug mode build includes symbols to allow you to attach a debugger to the dll while it is running. The result of this is slightly larger, less performant set of libraries. However, unless you are doing some really intense mathmatical processing, you probably wouldn't notice the performance loss.
Release mode on the other hand will produce smaller, more efficient dll's but you won't be able to attach an external debugger once you have deployed your application.
I would recommend you leave your applications in debug mode while in development/test, and then before deploying to production, switch to release mode.
UPDATE: I now realize I didn't answer your original question but hopefully you find the advice useful.
Related
Q. How can I setup our config/transforms to get release management to work in the example way?
I'm trying to get release management to work in the way all the videos seem to show. The same build progressing through environments going through build --> Dev/Staging --> Production.
It's making me step back a little and question the way we do our configurations in Visual Studio solutions (and our git flow branch process). I think the way we use the configurations is making things more difficult further down the line with the build and then release.
Configurations
We currently use the two default configurations, debug & release.
We tend to use the debug build on our Dev (contains the dev database
connection string & other app settings transforms). This is what we deploy to 'dev'.
Then we also have the release configuration with the production transforms in. This is what we deploy to 'Production'.
How can I setup our config/transforms to get release management to work in the example way?
One option: Build both configurations. Publish both configurations as artifacts in your build.
In your release definition, deploy the appropriate configuration from the linked artifacts.
Another option: Don't do compile-time configuration transforms and instead do deployment-time configuration.
What you provide in the screenshot is a Overview of releases. Which is used to track a release in Microsoft Release Management. Based on a release name and links.
The Overview page shows a list of release definitions. Each one is shown as a series of environments, with the name of the release and the date or time it was started. The color of the heading and the icon in each environment indicate the current status of the release. The color scheme is the same as in the Releases page.
You just need to follow the provided starter deployment templates or you can also create your own templates for your project.
Back to the screenshot, there are just the environments in a release build definition. You can add the need environment in the definitions.
After that you will view the same thing in the overview just like the example:
For your situation, you can created two separate release definition with two build definition based on the both configurations. Moreover,there has been a very detailed document in MSDN, including setup, configurations, manage release, deploy, you can have a systematic understanding.
Is there a simple way to set the TFS Build Number to be an Assembly Version during build?
I've seen many examples of the other way around (i.e. a build number updates the assembly version).
We already use the SharedAssemblyInfo implementation from here, so we would like to leverage this setup during the build process.
Currently using TFS 2012 with Release Management template (ReleaseDefaultTemplate.11.1.xaml).
Without modifying the build process template? No. Even then, the build number is set prior to compilation (or, IIRC, even syncing the code from source control), so you're in for a wild ride trying to get the behavior you want.
This might be a very easy to answer question but I'm losing time here trying to research silly little things so I thought I'd just pose the question here.
I have a solution in VS2013 with two projects. The main project (Startup project) is a C# Winforms project which targets a DB and the second project a SQL project which has the schema for said DB.
So I can make changes and build the SQL project. I can take snapshots and eveything works swimmingly. What I can't do is to Run the project (which should publish it into the (localdb) debug project. If I click on run, it runs the default startup project.
Of course I can temporarily set the SQL project as the default startup project, then run, then set the main project to the default startup project again.
Surely there must be a way in which I can build the SQL project and get it to publish to the debug DB all at once, or at least in easier steps as described above?
In fact, what I would ultimately like is if there was one hotkey that will build both projects, publish the SQL project to the debug DB and run the main project.
Never mind, I've figured it out. Go to PROJECT -> Project Dependencies...
Select the WinForms project in the "Projects:" combo box and tick the Database project in the "Depends on:" checklist box.
The WinForms project is now dependent on the Database project and if you Run the application, VS will first build the DB project, then publish it to the debug DB, then build the WinForms project and then run it. Or so it seems.
There are two sides to running the db deploy on each build, the on the one hand you want the db to be up to date but on the second it is quite slow and gets really irritating really quite quickly!
What you could do is to have your c# app as the startup app so pressing F5 starts it but also map a keyboard shortcut to "Build.SSDTPublishSelection", I map CTRL+6 as it is near F5 and I hadn't used that combination of shortcuts (at least not in the last 15 years!) - This only publishes the selected project so you do need to select it first in object explorer (I have that covered with another series of shortcuts which sets the focus to solution explorer and syncing with the current document - I know keyboard heaven, who needs vim and emacs ha ha)
This was you make sure the project is selected CTRL+6, publish then F5 and you should get what you want.
One additional thing is that if you haven't already, look at the add-ins that let you publish stored procs directly without going through the publish cycle, so you can make incremental changes, then when you are ready do a full publish and run all your tests (Dave Ballantyne published one: http://dataidol.com/davebally/2014/03/01/ssdt-fast-deploy/ and I have one: https://github.com/GoEddie/SSDTExtension/tree/master/download/0.4.2)
Hope it helps!
Ed Elliott
So I have this pretty huge solution with many projects, few of them use dlls from other projects in this solution, some projects copy files to other directories after build is performed. (as post build events)
when I build the solution locally on my machine, everything is great and working, but when i configure a build, and build it on build server (we use TFS) something goes wrong and i get a an error when i try to load one of the applications in this solution. (the error does not give me much data on what went wrong)
so before i sit to debug all of this. does anybody know how can i smartly manage all the build actions that are performed locally and via build server and see the deltas?
I would like to be able to build the solution exactly the same on build server as i do on my machine (with directory structure, post build events..etc)
thanks a lot
The generally accepted way to do what you're after is to use NuGet for managing your assembly references. You can publish your dependent assemblies into NuGet as part of a continuous delivery process, then reference (and update!) those dependencies in the solutions that consume them as necessary.
This removes ambiguity ("What version of Foo.dll is Project X using?") and reduces runtime errors ("Why is Project X using Foo.dll 3.0? It was never tested with 3.0! It needs to run with 2.7!").
I want to be able to build a web project and not its dependencies since I know that I have not modified any of the dependencies since the last build. I am looking to cut down the build time if possible. Is there a way to do this?
You could have a solution by
check the setting in Tools >> Options >> Projects and Solutions >>
Build and Run setting : Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run.
OR
If you want to go for sophistication then :
build >> Configuration Manager
from the "Active solution configuration:" dropdown select ""
give a name to your configuration and keep checked the "Create new project configurations" checkbox.
and then choose that config that you want and set the build or not check boxes.
To accomplish this in something I am working on, I created my own solution, added the projects I needed (including the projects I never wanted compiled), and then in the Configuration Manager turned off the check boxes for building the projects I didn't want to build, just as arora described above.
I've also made a copy of an existing solution (that had 16 components in it), saved it under new name (foo.sln -> foo.mine.sln), and then disabled the build of all the other sub-projects except the one(s) I am working on, that way I know for sure that I got the correct build settings.
It's not the simplest solution, but it works well for me, and takes less than 2 minutes to set up and is easy to understand. I normally add the new solution to the version control ignore list so that it never gets checked in.
Rather than project references you can just add the references to the dlls directly (the Add Reference dialog has tabs for these types, choose browse rather than project and remove the other projects from your solution). I typically create a full lib and web project solution for major development. Then just a solution for the website project for fixes where I don't need updated libs/dlls.
Although it is nice to have them autocompile if they have changed during heavy development. If they haven't changed it just refreshes them and recopies them to the bin folder.
Well one way would be to remove project references. Instead stick to dll references. You could use a post build script for dependent projects that copy the updated dll to the web project whenever they change.