get from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8440/visual-studio-optimizations#8473
The standard setup for .NET solutions is that each assembly gets its
own bin directory to which it is copied along with the assemblies of
all its dependencies. If your solution contains an .EXE file and, say,
40 different assemblies. Does it really make sense to copy the
dependencies of each assembly to each separate build directory? The
target directory of the EXE should be enough. Another way to
accomplish roughly the same would be to give the assemblies common
output directories. That also avoids the copying. Some earlier
versions of Visual Studio did not support this well, so be careful. I
have, however, been using this approach with VS2008 for quite a while
without noticing any problems.
question - how to disable creating "bin" etc for all child projects? Thanks
Edit - there is a more comprehensive answer at Optimizing Visual Studio solution build - where to put DLL files?.
Create top level /bin/ folders above all your child projects. Then for each project, right click and go to properties. On the build tab, you can amend the "Output path" to point to your new top level bin with a relative path (e.g. ../bin/Debug or ../bin/Release). You should do this for each build configuration (e.g. Debug and Release).
This should result in each assembly being copied just once to the same location.
Note I've checked this procedure in VS2008 but I suspect it is similar in 2010.
Related
I have a solution in VS 2010 containing 5 C# projects, 1 C++ project and 1 VB project. My solution has a solution folder "Dependencies" that replicates a file-system folder with the same name. The solution folder has a number of .dll files and some .xml files in it.
When I build my solution, all but one of the .dll files are copied from that folder to my output directory. I've looked at the file in Visual Studio for Copy Local property that is referenced here, the property is not there for any of that files in that folder.
I've looked at all the projects in my solution, and none of them are actually referencing that dll directly which I'm assuming is why it's not being copied. The problem lies in that one of the dlls that IS referenced by one of my projects depends on the dll not being copied.
I tried to add the problem dll as a reference in my projects and I get the following error
A reference to "dll" could not be added, Please make sure that the file is accessible, and that it is a valid assembly or COM component.
I don't really care if it's a COM component or that it's valid etc... because I need it to output.
My question is: How can I beat Visual Studio into submission and force it to copy the dll?
No need to beat anything, just add the DLL to one of the projects with Project + Add Existing Item. Any will do but you'd normally favor the one that has the dependency on this DLL. Your EXE project if you are not sure. it isn't clear if it matters, but use the arrow on the Add button to select "Add as Link" so the file doesn't get copied to the project directory. Afterwards, select it and change its Copy to Output Directory property to "Copy if Newer".
Do keep an eye on source control, this DLL probably needs to be checked-in. So having it in the dependent project directory is actually a good place for it.
Using xcopy.exe in a Post-Build event is otherwise a general way to copy dependent files that the build system doesn't know about or puts in the wrong place.
How can I make a solution in visual studio so that the .dll dependencies that reside in some other directory totally different from where the solution itself is affected by "get latest".
What I've tried is creating a Dependencies solution folder within the solution itself and added the dlls to it, that way they belong to the solution even though they don't belong to the directory structure of the solution.
So for example the .sln file is in:
D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA\solution.sln
and the dlls are in:
d:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionX\Dependencies\Binaries
What I really want to achieve is to have a foolproof way to build the solution, including the following scenario:
1- Have a brand new installation of windows, visual studio, etc.
2- open visual studio
3- find solution.sln on TFS, double click on it so that visual studio gets every project and files in the solution, and opens the solution
4- successfully build
What happens when I try the Dependencies solution folder approach and repeat the scenario above, it will get all the projects within the solution, opens it, but the dependencies solution contents won't be pulled from TFS (although Visual Studio shows them on Solution explorer), which I think is flawed.
Some suggestions that don't involve creating pre/post build scripts are appreciated.
When you attempt to open a solution for the first time using the TFS Source Control Explorer, you may find that not all of your dependencies will be retrieved - the squiggly line may be highlighting some of your missing References.
One work around is to...
SOLUTION SETUP
Checkout all of your source code from TFS (i.e. Main and all of the sub-directories)
Open your solution in Visual Studio (i.e. MyApplication.sln)
In the solution explorer, create a New Solution Folder called ThirdPartyDll, and then add the appropriate assembly references (i.e. Assembly1.dll, Assembly2.dll,...)
Check-in your solution to TFS
SAMPLE FILE STRUCTURE
Main
MyApplication.sln
Source
MyProjectA
MyProjectA.csproj
MyProjectB
MyProjectB.csproj
Dependencies
Assembly1.dll
Assembly2.dll
You've run into a limitation of the "Open from Source Control" functionality. If you added the solution to source control from Visual Studio you should have seen the following message:
"The project that you are attempting to add to source control may cause other source control users to have difficulty opening this solution or getting newer versions of it. To avoid this problem, add the project from a location below the binding root of the other source controlled projects in the solution."
Open from Source Control will create a workspace mapping for the solutions root directory (D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA) but not a separate one for the SolutionX folder which is a peer to SolutionA. On the "new" machine you will need to manually create a workspace mapping to d:\tfs\repository\main in order to get both the SolutionA and SolutionX folder.
Create a solution folder and add the dependencies to it, that way when VS gets latest for the solution it will download these files. A bit brittle as people will need to maintain that folder but it works.
Alternatively create a nuget package and use restore packages on build. It will require a couple of extra steps when you create a new developer box (your nuget package repo will need to be added) but it will work for all projects going forward and is less brittle than the solution folder method.
Here's my specific scenario: Using VS2010, Pex and TFS2008, generated moles files are getting automatically added to source-control (TFS).
Pex adds a "project_name.moles" file to your test project and then autogenerates 3 files at build time: project_name.Designer.cs, project_name.Moles.dll, and project_name.Moles.xml. I want to keep the *.moles files in TFS (it's source code) but I don't want the 3 generated files to be in TFS (they are still part of the project, but they are generated when first built on a new system).
There are two reasons I need this behavior:
1. It's not a good idea to store generated code in source-control (let's not debate the merits of that here).
2. Specially, the DLL file is BAD because every time someone builds, all moles files are regenerated and thus all files are checked-out and DLL files are checked-out EXCLUSIVELY (non-mergable) and so other people can no longer build on their local box.
The Pex/Moles team are working on this but the solution is still likely several months away.
Is there a csproj property that can be assigned to these project files so that they are in the project but not managed by version control? I don't mind hand-editing the csproj file.
Moles will not be adding any files to the project in the next version (v0.94). It will use MSBuild to generate the assemblies on demand.
I think it depends more on the version control tool than Visual Studio, as usually you can set up some kind of filters in your version control configuration in order to exclude some files/paths.
E.g. if you use Mercurial/Hg, you can (and should) edit your repository .hgignore file and specify e.g. to exclude all *.moles files and the whole sub-tree MolesAssemblies\*. I guess other version control systems have similar options.
If I have a visual studio solution with a multiple projects, from the projects how do I figure out which one will have all the dlls once the solution is built?
The reason is I need to copy those dll's for my custom written build app. I know in the Visual studio GUI, if I right click on the solution and go to Project Build Order, the lowest level item will be the project which will have the complete list of built dll's and referenced dll's. So is there any logic I can use to work this out through code?
You could write some code to read the solution / project files (the formats are not hard) and work out the dependency tree yourself.
However, a better approach is to change all the projects to output to a common \bin directory to start with by altering the build properties in Visual Studio. This avoids you having numerous copies of binaries in various individual project bin directories and makes life easier when it grows to a size where you need to split into multiple solutions.
A directory structure something like the following is often useful:
\bin (Common output directory for all projects)
\src (I usually keep the solution file in \src)
\ProjectA
\ProjectB
\lib (Common libraries, e.g. nunit or log4net etc)
As an example, I'm trying to add a reference to WatiN in Visual Studio 2008. I download WatiN and I have a folder on my desktop containing 5 files:
WatiN.Core.dll
WatiN.Core.xml
Interop.SHDocVw.dll
Microsoft.mshtml.dll
WatiN.Core.UnitTests.dll
WatiN.Core.UnitTests.dll.config
I can add my reference to WatiN.Core.dll and start coding in Visual Studio. But I have some questions:
Can I now delete the folder on my desktop? Were the files copied to the project bin?
What happens when I check my project into source code and another developer checks it out? Does he/she have to have the same folder on their desktop.
My thought was to create a lib folder in the project and reference the files in the lib folder. This folder will get added to source control so that everything should work for the next developer. But I have some questions about this solution:
Do I need all 6 of those files?
I believe the .config files have something to do with intellisense, but the project will build and run without them right?
How do I know what files to include apart from the WatiN.Core.dll. The project builds and runs with only WatiN.Core.dll and Interop.SHDocVw.dll. How am I meant to know what the dependencies are?
Any insight is much appreciated.
Adding a reference does just that. It adds a reference, so if the reference is to your desktop folder other developers will not be able to see the files. Also, if you delete the files you will have dangling references in your project. In general, don't reference files on your desktop.
Making a lib folder in the same source control tree as the project as you have suggested is a much better solution. Visual Studio will store the references as relative paths enabling other developers to compile the project.
You will have to study the documentation for the WatiN library to know which files are required by your application. You should not delete the .config file as it is not related to intellisense.
I would create a developement tree with all source files, library files, tools, docs, resources so that any developer can get a working project straight from source control without having to search for references.
Having referenced DLLs in a lib folder means that projectA is able to use version 1.0 of the DLL and projectB is able to user version 2.0 of the DLL.
When the solution builds it will get the DLLs from where they are referenced. If it cant find them the project wont build.
Have a look at the following articles.
http://www.codeplex.com/treesurgeon
As for which dlls you need to reference, you can go the way of only referencing what you need.
WATiN needs the WATiN.Core.dll and the Interop.SHDocVw.dll in order to run. As others have suggested, it's best to have a lib folder in your source control tree for external libraries so everyone can use relative references.
TreeSurgeon, mentioned above, is a good tool or you can at least use their folder structure as a model.
The Watin.Core.xml file should give you intellisense if you put it in the bin with the dll.
I believe you can only delete the folder if you are referencing the file directly from the bin folder (cut and pasted it there). If you are referencing the file from the folder than I believe you need to keep it there.
You may run into problems deleting the other files if the dll your referencing, references the classes in the other dll's.