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.
Related
I have a large solution with many project. We have about six developers working on this solution using VS2013 and it is source controlled by TFS 2013.
Periodically project references and file references to DLLs are broken. The little yellow sign with the black exclamation point shows next to the reference in the project references and when I look at the properties of the broken references, I noticed that the path was empty for the elements that are broken.
I could remove and re-add the references, but I have done this a few times before and it keeps breaking again.
I Googled around and found several people talking about similar issues, but in most cases I see, after removing and adding the references, everything is ok.
I my case, this keeps happening over and over.
Is there a known cause for this? I can keep re-fixing this, but it's just a workaround and not a solution.
Assuming ProjectFirst generates the DLLs for ProjectSecond, to narrow down the issue, you can first build the ProjectFirst and then build the ProjectSecond to see whether the behavior correct. If that works, you probably need to check your build order.
In Solution Explorer, select a project or select the solution. On the Project menu, choose Project Build Order to check the build order.
On the Dependencies tab, select ProjectSecond from the Project drop-down menu. In the Depends on field, select the check box of ProjectFirst that must build before this project does.
Additionally, check ProjectSecond to see whether it by default to targeting .NET Client Profile. If it is, change it to regular .NET.
We have a solution with hundreds of projects (> 400) and tens of thousands of source files and for some unknown reason a set of updates got applied to the machine right in the middle of a build, killing the build and closing Visual Studio. When VS was reopened some projects did not load (even after close and re-open) so had to sort through > 400 projects and find those that did not load and manually tell VS to reload the missing/not loaded projects. After that things seem back to normal.
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.
I have a VS solution containing several projects. While debugging a particular project all the source files are locked by VS. I would like to unlock sources that the debugee doesn't have dependency on. Is there any way to do this within one solution?
UPDATE:
I'm using Win XP SP3 32bit. Visual Studio 2010, C#. Edit and Continue is enabled. The solution contains 6 projects (number in not important actually), 5 of them depend on the data access layer project which uses Entity Framework. None of the 5 have any mutual dependencies. They are WinForms and Console applications. I would like to be able to run one of the projects and make changes to others without stopping the first. The problem is starting and stopping the project take considerable amount of time.
The Edit and Continue feature is preventing you from editing files if the debugger hasn't stopped the program. The simple workaround is Debug + Break All, you should then be able to edit the files, your changes will be immediately effective provided your changes do not violate the restrictions imposed by E+C. This is the most efficient work flow.
The heavy-handed approach is to disable Edit and Continue. Tools + Options, Debugger, Edit and Continue, uncheck the Enable check box.
I don't think that there is a way to avoid that. While debugging Visual Studio lock all files to prevent any change on them, including those on other projects.
You can try to open the project which you are interested on with another Visual Studio instance to make changes to your files or open files singularly with another editor.
This doesn't quite answer the OP's question per se, but for anyone who has stumbled upon this page in the same (very frustrated) boat as I am, this might help.
The solution: start without debugging.
It was driving me absolutely crazy that Visual Studio would not let me edit files while the app was running. My typical workflow is:
Make some changes
Run the app to see the effects of those changes
Based on the results, make more changes, etc. etc.
The problem is Visual Studio was preventing me from step 3. It demands that you STOP running the app before you can even make any changes (including to a XAML file or adding a file to the project), which also means that you can't go back to the app to double-check something while you are actually programming it at the same time (which is how I work, bro).
Thank god I finally discovered if I run without debugging it doesn't impose this ridiculous limitation. It's still a pain in the butt if you actually need to debug something you have to re-run the app in debug mode, but it sure beats having to kill the app before it will even let you edit a file.
I'm developing in Visual Studio 2005, using TFS as the source control. Whenever I haven't been working on the solution for a while, I always do a recursive Get Latest in Solution Explorer.
However, this doesn't always seem to work. If I know I don't have the latest version of a file, even right-clicking this (in Solution Explorer), choosing Get Specific Version and ticking the "Force get" box doesn't work.
I seem to need to open up the TFS Source Control window, and there force a Get of the file in question.
Also, the Solution Explorer often has the little "checked out to someone else" icon next to files, but when I check in Source Control, they're not checked out at all!
I'd just like to know if these problems are widespread, whether they persist in VS2008 (I haven't used TFS for a big project in 2008 yet), and if there are any fixes or workarounds.
1) I would not make a habit out of Get Latest from Solution Explorer. Even if it always worked 100% bug free, it is far slower and less reliable than doing it from the command line or Source Control Explorer. SlnExp has to crawl your whole project structure and issue non-recursive calls...pseudo algorithm:
parse sln file
foreach project in sln
TFS_GET makefile
parse makefile
enumerate sourcefiles[]
TFS_GET sourcefiles[]
loop
SCE requires no parsing and issues one single recursive webservice call. In addition to the performance gain, this is much safer:
(a) Build-time dependencies aren't always part of a project's file list. Executable tools, 3rd party assemblies, and deployment scripts are all common examples. SCE will download them, SlnExp won't.
(b) Scoping Get calls down to specific files won't yield the expected result when a file is renamed or moved. At best, the "old" name is deleted from disk; at worst, nothing appears to happen at all. (this may be the cause of the bug you reported) In order for a file to truly be renamed/moved in sync with the server, the old & new paths must both be inside the scope of the Get.
2) There have been many bug fixes to the SlnExp "glyphs" over the years. I won't claim that VS2008 SP1 is perfect in this regard but it is definitely improved.
Sometimes Get specific version even checking both checkboxes won't get you the latest file. Most commonly what happens is that you've made a change to a file, and you want to undo those changes by re-getting the latest version. Well... that's what Undo pending changes is for and not the purpose of Get specific version.
If in doubt:
undo pending check in on the file(s) before you do 'get latest'
do a compare afterwards to make sure your file matches the expected version
run a recursive 'compare' on your whole project afterwards to see what's different
keep an eye on pending changes window and sometimes you may need to check 'take server version' to resolve an incompatible pending change
And this one's my favorite that I just discovered :
check the Output window for messages such as this :
Warning - Unable to refresh R:\TFS-PROJECTS\www.example.com\ExampleMVC\Example MVC\Example MVC.csproj because you have a pending edit.
Yes this critical message appears in the output window. No other notifications!
Nothing in pending changes and no other dialog message telling you that the file you just requested explicitly was not retrieved! And yes - you resolve this by just running Undo pending changes and getting the file.
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.