We have a WinForms application, targeting .NET 3.5.
Loading it up into VS2010 works fine, editing form layouts using the forms designer is fine initially, then we compile and run.
However, after that, pretty much any change to the layout of a form (sometimes just a solution rebuild) will break the designer.
The error we get is:
Could not load file or assembly 'OurControls, Version=1.0.0.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The
system cannot find the file specified.
Restarting VS2010 and reloading the solution will cure it, but only for a couple of edits before it recurs.
The project referred to in the message contains a bunch of home-grown controls that we use in the application. It's as if a Rebuild Solution causes VS lose its ability to reference it - but as I say, it has no problem on initial load.
We never had this with VS2008, and the solution is a straight upgrade from then.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.. it's not yet practical to migrate to .NET 4, unfortunately, or to WPF!
Edit:
The folder structure is as follows:
Solution Folder
. Projects folder
.. Project A
.. Project B etc
The startup project, containing the forms, is in one of the folders A, B etc. The OurControls that it can't find, is one of the others at that level.
On initially opening the solution, all projects load correctly, and there are no errors or reference warnings.
On initial rebuild after opening the solution, all the project folders get their respective DLLs correctly.
A 'Clean Solution' does not solve the problem.
It's a VS2010 bug, see
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/709080/after-working-for-a-while-vs-designer-stops-to-regnize-types-and-does-not-allow-designing-winforms#.
You could sending them a dump file when it happens , since it's easy for me to reproduce/send dump files to MS.
Not a fix, but in Visual Studio 2010 I've found out that the quickest way to get the form designer back on track is unload/reload the project where the form is in. Don't know if it always helps, but it is quicker than restarting visual studio.
Let's see if VS 2012 is better.
Related
When I start up Visual Studio 2013 everything works perfectly, then after 10-20 minutes it stops allowing me to type semicolon but everything else sill works. I can copy/paste semicolons from elsewhere in the source file, but this is a real pain.
It has been doing this for a few days. I didn't manually update anything recently.
I tried clearing the Resharper cache and even disabled Resharper altogether just in case but the problem keeps on happening.
Help!!!
I finally discovered what my problem is. I am writing a reusable library and want to build .Net 4.0 and .Net 4.5 versions from the same source code. I achieved this by creating two projects in the same folder that reference the same source files but are configured to target different frameworks, and use different bin and obj folders.
This setup seems to work really well for the most part, but it appears to really confuse the Visual Studio intellisense system because when you open a source file and edit it, Intellisense doesn't know whether to make suggestions from the .Net 4.0 or 4.5 framework because the source file belongs to both projects.
I solved my semicolon problem by unloading the .Net 4.5 project whilst editing and debugging the code, then reloading it when I want to make a release build.
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.
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.
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...
I had been happily coding along on a decent sized solution (just over 13k LOC, 5 projects) which utilizes Linq to Sql for it's data access. All of sudden I performed a normal build and I received a sweet, sweet ambiguous message:
Error 1 Build failed due to validation errors in C:\xxx\xxx.dbml. Open the file and resolve the issues in the Error List, then try rebuilding the project. C:\xxx\xxx.dbml
I had not touched my data access layer for weeks and no adjustments had been made to the DBML file. I tried plenty of foolhardy tricks like re-creating the layout file, making copies and re-adding the existing files back to the project after restarting Visual Studio (in case of some file-level corruption); all to no avail.
I forgot to wear my Visual Studio Skills +5 talismans, so I began searching around and the only answer that I found which made sense was to reset my packages because Visual Studio was not loading an assembly correctly. After running "devenv.exe /resetskippkgs" I was, in fact, able to add the dbml file back to the DAL project and rebuild the solution.
I’m glad it’s fixed, but I would rather also gain a deeper understand from this experience. Does anyone know how or why this happens in Visual Studio 2008?
New Edit: 10/30/2008
THIS WAS NOT SOMETHING THAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME.
Rich Strahl recently wrote on his "web log" about the same experience. He links to another blog with the same issue and used the same action.
I have encountered this issue a few times since this original post as well, making me think that this is not some random issue. If anyone finds the definitive answer please post.
After installing Phalanger for Visual Studio 2008, I attempted to create a new PHP WinForms Application. The project creation failed with a similar error message, stating that a DLL required could not be loaded (Failed to load file or assembly...). Running the devenv.exe /resetskippkgs command in Visual Studio 2008 Command Promtp resolved the issue immediately.
Thanks for the info.
I also get this error when trying to compile the data access layer in the second solution (installer). What I do is that I run Custom Tool on the dbml-file, and this does it.
There is really no errors in the dbml file that needs to be corrected.
My theory in this is that Visual Studio caches the compiled version of the dbml file, and that the cache is invalid for other solutions. I guess running /resetskippkgs does the same thing as recompiling the dbml file.
Anyway, there are no fix for this yet?
TBH, I have had a couple of instances like this where files "seemed to go crazy".. However, upon investigation it has appeared that the files have changed in some way, shape or form.. (e.g. sometimes changes can be made to the file by inadvertantly changing a property somewhere that seems unrelated).
I think there are too many possible issues that could really cause this, and based on the fact that the problem has been resovled, it seems like an answer will not be found..
I had the same issue in VS 2010 (build failed due to validation errors in dbml file). I resolved this by viewing the designer view of the dbml file and dragging a table slightly to a different location so that it refreshed the dbml layout etc files. This seemed to do the trick, but was a bit of a weird issue.