How can you open two different historic versions of same solution in two separate instances of Visual Studio? (VS2012)
What I need to do is look at the whole solution for a point in time so I can use "find all references", which you cant do when viewing a single file from a changeset.
If you get the whole codebase for the changeset you require then you overwrite the current code base (as both code bases sit on same location on your local file system) and lose ability to cross reference you current code with the historic version.
Is there a way I can view both current and historic versions of code in Visual Studio (same or different instances) and still be able to use find all references in both versions of the code?
You will need to
Pull the first version using the "Get Specific Version" right click option within Source Control Explorer
Copy the files from your local path to a different path
Pull the second version
Open two instances of VS each pointed to the appropriate folders
Its not pretty but it works.
I'm currently working within a monolithic solution that is a conglomeration of several smaller projects and the result of many developers efforts. However, one of these efforts was not the creation of a standards document regarding naming practices for test classes. As such I have over 1500 individual test classes that may have a suffix of "Test", "Tester", or "Tests".
Is there a good way to batch rename all the *[Test|Tester].cs files within our solution to *Tests.cs taking into account the preexisting TFS and project file structure?
The solution that seemed to work for me was to do a Find & Replace via a regular expression across targeted test projects within my solution.
In the standared Visual Studio Find and Replace Dialog
I searched for public\W+class\W+([a-zA-Z0-9-_]+)Test(er)?\b
and replaced with the captured group of public class $1Tests
within all files matching *Test.cs;*Tester.cs
Importantly, and for reasons unknown to me, if I didn't check the "Keep modified files open after Replace All" the find and replace would fail
eg:
Once the find and replace operation was completed I used Resharper's Move Types Into Matching Files refactor function on the test packages in order to update references in both TFS and various project files.
Use a local workspace and your bulk renaming tool of choice. It doesn't have to be within Visual Studio. A local workspace will allow changes to the structure of the project to be made from any tool and still "noticed" by the pending changes window or tf.exe.
You'll still have to update the *.*proj files to take into account that the files have been renamed, of course.
I could use some advice.
I'm in the process of adopting subversion, and I'm trying to put some existing Visual Studio 2010 projects into a repository. I have the current version of AhnkSvn.
The projects I have are organised as;
VS2010_projects\Project_A
VS2010_projects\Project_B
VS2010_projects\Project_C
VS2010_projects\Common_code
Where Project_A, Project_B and Project_C may all refer to one or more files in "Common_Code"
In visual studio, these files will have been added using "add as link".
There is no actual project in "Common_code" just a collection of useful code files, which we're likely to re-use in different projects.
(If we have a module or class which is re-used in various projects, then we often keep a single master copy in 'common-code', and link to it.)
Visual Studio has no problem with this.
When I add any of the actual projects to subversion, all of their own files are added just fine, but the linked files are ignored.
(And as a consequence, if I then get a working copy of those files, then it's just the project files which get handled, I won't get a copy of the linked files.)
If I right click on any of the linked files, I the only subversion options I get are to refresh their status or to select the working folder.
I was wondering what the correct way to handle this situation was ?
Any advice would be much appreciated
Thanks !
Robert
if I understand your question correctly then I think SVN is acting in the desired way. A linked file is merely a reference to another file. That reference exists only in the .csproj file which is checked in. It would not make sense to have two copies of the same file in source control, and it could lead to versioning issues. The first time you checkout your repository doing a build on your projects should copy the files from Common_code to the places that they're linked.
As an aside we've had alot of random issues with .csproj linked files and SVN, and so try to avoid linked files where possible. A better way to re-use files across projects is obviously just to embed them in a library and then reference that library. This should work fine with the exception of certain files like Javascript/CSS.
Also you may want to check out SVN externals, a workmate mentioned this can be used to share common libraries between multiple projects, although as a disclaimer I haven't tried this myself and can't comment on the merits or drawbacks of the approach.
Thanks for the advice, I actually did something similar to your suggestion.
I didn't want to make a full blown library, but I did make up a dummy project, and put my shared files into that.
Then I added the dummy project to the repository.
AhnkSvn now seems to be satisfied that the linked files are under subversion control, and seems to handle them just fine.
(I haven't added any reference to the dummy project to my existing projects - they just use the linked files as before - but now AhnkSvn shows me their status, and allows me to get the latest version, and commit changes.)
I can see the case for having a proper library - but that would have meant modifying a large body of existing projects. This approach lets me get up and running with Subversion without requiring those changes first.
This is my first attempt at creating linked work items in TFS. I'm using VS2010 TFS with the Agile template out of the box. I created a Requirements type Work Item for creating a class specifying several requirements. In Test Driven Design style I created a test project with tests for the requirements.
Now I would like to link the Requirements Work Item to the source code file with the tests. When I select the All Links tab in the Work Item window and then use the Link to button the dialog it brings up won't let me specify a source file. It seems to only want to link to another Work Item. I'd like to link it to the source file so when the requirements change there will be a link to the test source file to be changed. Is there a way to do this. Thanks in advance.
Jon Newbill
The way TFS associates work items with code is at checkin. One of the reasons for this is that a source file might implement many requirements, tasks and bug fixes over time. You want to associate the changes to the file to a work item, not the file itself.
A requirement (or bug fix or task) might involve changes to multiple files so you should checkin files in logical groups. I.e. if you've changed 3 source files and a config file to fix a bug then you can check those files in separately and associate the changes to the bug work item at each checkin. You could also check in all 4 files at the same time and associate that single checkin to the work item.
If you change 3 source files and a config file to fix a bug, and you have also changed another source file to add extra functionality, you should avoid checking this file in with the others as it will be held in the same changeset and associated with the same work items as the bug fix code.
In your specific case, if the requirements change then I think you should probably create a new work item. That way you can see the code that implemented the original requirement and the changes to the file will be associated to the change in requirements.
You can associate changesets to Work Items as seen in this picture
Is it a best practice to commit a .sln file to source control? When is it appropriate or inappropriate to do so?
Update
There were several good points made in the answers. Thanks for the responses!
I think it's clear from the other answers that solution files are useful and should be committed, even if they're not used for official builds. They're handy to have for anyone using Visual Studio features like Go To Definition/Declaration.
By default, they don't contain absolute paths or any other machine-specific artifacts. (Unfortunately, some add-in tools don't properly maintain this property, for instance, AMD CodeAnalyst.) If you're careful to use relative paths in your project files (both C++ and C#), they'll be machine-independent too.
Probably the more useful question is: what files should you exclude? Here's the content of my .gitignore file for my VS 2008 projects:
*.suo
*.user
*.ncb
Debug/
Release/
CodeAnalyst/
(The last entry is just for the AMD CodeAnalyst profiler.)
For VS 2010, you should also exclude the following:
ipch/
*.sdf
*.opensdf
Yes -- I think it's always appropriate. User specific settings are in other files.
Yes you should do this. A solution file contains only information about the overall structure of your solution. The information is global to the solution and is likely common to all developers in your project.
It doesn't contain any user specific settings.
You should definitely have it. Beside the reasons other people mentioned, it's needed to make one step build of the whole projects possible.
I generally agree that solution files should be checked in, however, at the company I work for we have done something different. We have a fairly large repository and developers work on different parts of the system from time to time. To support the way we work we would either have one big solution file or several smaller. Both of these have a few shortcomings and require manual work on the developers part. To avoid this, we have made a plug-in that handles all that.
The plug-in let each developer check out a subset of the source tree to work on simply by selecting the relevant projects from the repository. The plugin then generates a solution file and modifies project files on the fly for the given solution. It also handles references. In other words, all the developer has to do is to select the appropriate projects and then the necessary files are generated/modified. This also allows us to customize various other settings to ensure company standards.
Additionally we use the plug-in to support various check-in policies, which generally prevents users from submitting faulty/non-compliant code to the repository.
Yes, things you should commit are:
solution (*.sln),
project files,
all source files,
app config files
build scripts
Things you should not commit are:
solution user options (.suo) files,
build generated files (e.g. using a build script) [Edit:] - only if all necessary build scripts and tools are available under version control (to ensure builds are authentic in cvs history)
Regarding other automatically generated files, there is a separate thread.
Yes, it should be part of the source control.
When ever you add/remove projects from your application, .sln would get updated and it would be good to have it under source control. It would allow you to pull out your application code 2 versions back and directly do a build (if at all required).
Yes, you always want to include the .sln file, it includes the links to all the projects that are in the solution.
Under most circumstances, it's a good idea to commit .sln files to source control.
If your .sln files are generated by another tool (such as CMake) then it's probably inappropriate to put them into source control.
We do because it keeps everything in sync. All the necessary projects are located together, and no one has to worry about missing one. Our build server (Ant Hill Pro) also uses the sln to figure which projects to build for a release.
We usually put all of our solutions files in a solutions directory. This way we separate the solution from the code a little bit, and it's easier to pick out the project I need to work on.
The only case where you would even considder not storing it in source control would be if you had a large solution with many projects which was in source control, and you wanted to create a small solution with some of the projects from the main solution for some private transient requirement.
Yes - Everything used to generate your product should be in source control.
We keep or solution files in TFS Version Control. But since or main solution is really large, most developers have a personal solution containing only what they need. The main solution file is mostly used by the build server.
.slns are the only thing we haven't had problems with in tfs!