I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for my solution. We are a couple of developers on the same project and we are using SVN. My Question is: What is a good way of including external dlls referenced from a project? And if the dll is used accross many projects in the solution, do you still put the DLL in each one of the project?
Thank you!
I prefer (although I don't know how "Best Practice" this is) to keep a "Reference Assemblies" folder under the root of my project (on the same level as my "trunk" folder) that I keep all of my external DLLs in, then reference them from there in my project. That way, whenever anyone checks-out the project, the reference location for the DLLs will be the same.
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I need to copy standard component DLLs into a standard folder defined in every VS2012 project when the project is opened. We're not allowed to store DLLs in Subversion so I need to reload this folder every time a developer opens the project/solution. I'm looking for an automation solution that will pull DLLs from a centralized location and copy them into the developer's solution. I looked at Visual Studio Extensions but it seems like an awful lot of work just to copy a couple of files. Are there any other hooks in VS2012 (and hopefully VS2010) where I can code simple PowerShell scripts to copy these files?
It turns out AntHillPro has it's own functionality for storing common DLLs and loading them into folders in your Solution before building. It's not as elegant as an MSBuild pre-build task but it fits in with the model followed by our Java builds with some slight tweaking.
Why you just do no use Nuget? Adding nuget reference and enable nuget restore on build will do exactly what you need. You can create nuget repository as shared folder.
When I develop my web applications in Visual Studio 2010 I use tools such as GhostDoc, SandCastle, AJAX Toolkit, Moq, etc...
I usually use these tools in all my projects. When I downloaded the Moq tool for instance, I had a zip file with inside a couple of assemblies. Therefore, after unzipping the file, I added the relevant assemblies within the folder (in the file system) of the project I was currently developing, and then I referenced the dlls from Visual Studio.
Now the problem, or better organizational drawbacks, with this are 2:
1) I placed the assemblies within a specific project folder. That's ugly, since I would like to put the assemblies in one folder common to all the projects. Where do you usually put them?
2) Everytime I start a new project I need to reference all the assemblies over again. This, especially with the Ajax Toolkit is quite annoying. Is there any way to tell Visual Studio to add a set of predefined assemblies everytime I create a new project?
For the popular tools you can use NuGet. It will help you manage both the downloading, updating and removal of tools and referencing the appropriate assemblies.
Of the ones you mention, I found the following ones in the official NuGet packages repo:
Moq
AjaxControlToolkit
I have about 15 projects in a solution, and all of them have some broken third-party dll references. How do I configure VS to look for dlls in one specific directory? I am trying to compile and link my project, but it doesn't work because projects have broken references to existing third-party dlls. My solution consists of C# class library projects and an ASP.NET web site.
If they are project references (and they probably should be), you should not need to (unles you have moved the projects)
Otherwise, create a third-party Lib folder (under source control) at the solution root folder, place your third-party DLLs in it and reference from there.
If you need to fix up references, download and install VSCommands 2010 which has a very useful copy and paste references feature (among others). [Fix up for one project, and then simply copy and paste to other projects. Failing that, you would need to manually edit the .proj files, using Powershell for instance.]
You go from one project to the other and update the references to point to the new location.
If this is a third party DLL, you can record a macro the first time you do this and replay it for each project.
Can someone briefly explain to me the difference between Visual Studio's solution file (.sln) and project file (.vcproj).
It seems to me opening either one open the correct solution/project in Visual Studio. Is one the super-set of the other?
Note: I am currently using Visual Studio 2008 working on a project that was brought forward from Visual Studio 2005 (I believe).
A solution is a set of projects. If you need more than one project in your software, then go with solutions. I.E.: A Class Library Project + A Web Application Project.
A project file typically corresponds to a single module: EXE or DLL or LIB. A solution manages a collection of project files.
A solution is a collection of projects. Visual Studio is made so that it cannot function without a solution, so if you open a bare project, it will generate the solution automatically (or try to find one).
One solution can contain zero or more projects. Everything is in projects, so a solution with zero projects doesn't contain anything at all besides the solution properties.
Visual studio keeps track of where the projects are used, so if you open a project file, it will open (IIRC) the last solution where it was used.
When you create a project from scratch, a solution is also created, but it's not shown until you add another project to it. It looks like you have only the project open, but it's actually a solution containing the project that is open.
Specifically project files are intended to contain the data required to build the files in the project into an exe or dll. This file is utilized by the local compilers or with systems such as Team Foundation system and server side build agents.
Solutions are a client (IDE) construct designed to manage collections of projects, which in effect is a collection of different build definitions and associated files.
Solution files are typically made up of multiple project files.
(I know I am using Visual Source Safe, I do not have a choice because it comes with the MSDN Subscription license and my company does not want to buy a third party source control solution....)
I have a VS 2005 solution with 3 C# class library projects, 2 ASP.NET web site projects and one ASP.NET web service project that is stored in a Visual Source Safe database. Some of the projects reference a common library DLLs that handle common taskes.
When a new person sets ups the solution on their workstation and build it for the first time, it checks out the common library DLLs in the bin folder of the ASP.NET web site and web service projects. When another developer that is currently working on the project tries to build, they receive a "file excludely checked out by other user" message.
VS 2005 does not display the check mark next to the DLL that is causing the headache.
Is there a way to prevent this from happenning?
Why do you have the bin folder checked into SourceSafe? On projects I've worked on, the third party dlls were checked into a separate folder (maybe called ExternalLibraries or ThirdParty) at the same level as the solution file. The compile process would be set up to copy the dlls into the bin folder. This could be handled with .refresh files, or with a pre- or post-build step. This way, VisualStudio/SourceSafe won't see the files as having been updated, and won't try to check them out.
If the compile is already pulling the files in due to them being dependencies, I'd suggest removing the bin folder from VSS. This is not the same as an "Exclude folder from project" which hides the folder from VS05 when compiling (and gives you the compile error you mentioned.)
If the third party dlls aren't going to change, another option is to make those files read-only in VSS. This way, no users will be able to check out the files. (To mark the files read-only, you will need to change the permissions from the VSS management tool; the developer's tool doesn't have that feature.)
As for why it happens, I don't believe VSS checks the binary version numbers - it is only concerned with modify file date. If a new developer pulls all the code out, all files (including binaries) will have the current date as the modify date. This may be causing the unnecessary checkouts.
Regarding your later comments - I'm not sure why VS05 wouldn't see the files as under source control but the VSS UI does. I suspect it has to do with the .vss files (and similar) that are in that folder. In this case, VS05 is incorrect.
Not sure if this is the problem or the best fix, but if you update every developer's machine so that they have the same latest versions of the common DLLs installed, this shouldn't keep happening. I think VSS checks out the DLLs in the \bin folder if the version referenced by the project file doesn't match the version installed on the developer's machine.
#Pedro:
In the VS 2005 IDE inteface, it does not indicated that the \bin folder is in VSS. When I look at the project in the VSS UI, it shows that is checked out to the user who did the latest build on their workstation.
If I use the "Exclude folder from project" option, it will cause the compiler to throw "reference not found" errors.
In my solution structure, the class library project creates a reference to the third party DLLs using the "Add Reference" command. Then I set a project reference to the class librarys in my ASP,NET web site and web service projects (using the web site project template). Because the class library has a dependency on the third party DLLs, they are copyed in the \bin folder.
How do I set a file to read-only through the VSS UI?