I have a solution with many many projects, I did not write this project but it's an open source project (mysql++) , I need to include an include path to all projects. I would like to just globally add this include path to the solution and have it cascade down to all the projects... is this possible? I dread thinking about having to do the same thing for each individual project.
Thank you,
Alessandro Ferrucci
Visual Studio lets you modify many projects at once. Simply click the first in the Solution Explorer, shift-click the last, and right-click the group to get to the project properties. Now any changes you make affect all projects you selected.
Don't do this if individual projects have different include path settings and they must continue to have different settings. Changing the include path in this way will make them all the same. This may be fine even if they currently have different settings if you can agree on a path that makes sense for all the projects.
If each project has to have a different include path, the best way I know to do what you want is to open all the project files in a plain text editor, search for AdditionalIncludeDirectories, and paste the MySQL++ include directory plus a semicolon into the string that follows. Be sure to do this for all places that attribute appears in each project. At minimum, there will be two: one each for Release and Debug builds.
EDIT: If you use a good text editor, this can be a lot faster than doing the same operation inside Visual Studio. I recommend Vim, if you already have vi skills. Its . command to repeat the previous edit makes the "search, navigate, change" cycle much faster.
Related
I have been using Visual Studios 2019 as my IDE to learn C++ in school for a little over a month now. I often create new CPP files for practice or class lab work which means I have multiple CPP files in a single solution.
I have learned you can 'exclude' CPP files from the solution to allow you to run other CPP files when testing or debugging a program. However I know this isn't a perfect way to do this because it seems that the IDE will often completely remove the files from the solution explorer leaving me with no way to include them back into the solution.
I have set the solution explorer to list all files and have seen the files stay in the solution explorer with the file name still listed with a little 'do not enter' symbol over the file icon to indicate it is not a part of the solution anymore. This is fine as it allows me to right click and interact with the file at will which in turn allows me to include or exclude the file without issue.
I have had so many different and weird issues when doing this but the question I want answered right now is how can I prevent a CPP file (or any file for that matter) from utterly disappearing out of the solution explorer?
I'd like to suggest a different workflow: create multiple projects within your solution.
Use menu File -> Add -> New Project...
Follow the wizard (likely - Console App), name it as something you can recognize (Lab1, for example).
Now you can select any of your projects in the Solution Explorer and use Set as a Startup Project in the context menu.
This allows you to browse your entire code easily, copy/paste (I don't endorse that :) ), and run/debug the active project.
At my company, our software for one set of services is broken out into many different solutions containing any number of 350+ projects. My job at the company is to trace through all of this code to find where errors occur.
To facilitate this, I would like to have all of the projects contained within a single solution. I can do this via the 'Add Existing Project...' menu item, but it only allows me to add one project at a time. I also noticed that I can add existing items (multiple simultaneously) from Windows Explorer by dragging them onto a solution folder, but that doesn't import projects; it only adds the project file itself to the folder.
Is there a way to add multiple projects to a solution simultaneously? I realize that this may (read: will) take a long time.
I think you are looking for something like this:
http://nprove.codeplex.com/
This allows to load a a project or a folder with projects from the team foundation source control explorer into the current solution.
A solution would be to create a small program that takes as input the list of projects you want to add to your solution (or that scans a directory for *.csproj, *.vbproj...) and writes to the *.sln file of your solution.
If you open a *.sln file with notepad, you'll see there is no magic in it, it's just a text file that contains the list of projects (with their GUID) and some information about the build configuration.
Look at the structure of a solution file and try to write a piece of code that does the same as visual studio when user adds a project to the solution.
I'm pretty sure that can be automated with a small effort. Just a matter of file parsing.
Visual Studio Extension "Add Existing Projects" (Created by: Cyotek) allows you to add multiple projects to one solution by selecting all once. Worked perfectly for me on VS2017.
I am working on a project using VS 2008, containing MANY files within projects
within solutions. We recently had to convert all our work from VS 2003 to 2008 (you know
how big companies are always the last to convert to the lastest version of stuff).
In trying a "Find in Files" (or "Quick Find") within 1 solution containing 3 projects, I am successful in my search within all 3 projects only when using "Current Doc" & "All Open Docs". But when using "Entire Solution" or "Current Project" only 2 of the 3 projects give me correct results. The Find will not show files within 1 project in particular that I KNOW include results from my Find.
After reading suggestions from:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=105511
I attempted every Workaround they had, and NONE worked for me. Any suggestions???
Setting find options
First try the following:
Ctrl+Shift+F (Find In Files)
Look in: Entire Solution
Expand Find Options
Whatever for Match case
Whatever for Match whole word
Uncheck "Use:"
Look at these file types: *.*
"Dealing" with some rare solution hierarchy issues
Next, if you have your projects organized into solution folders (as in you have this instead of this), try expanding each of the projects one time, as follows:
foreach solution folder in the project
expand the solution folder
foreach project in the solution folder
• expand the project node
• (optional) collapse the project node
(optional) collapse the solution folder
Additional details regarding expanding the projects: in my work on my Solution File List tool pane (in particular the Find in Solution Explorer feature shown), I found that sometimes files aren't found in the solution if the project hasn't been expanded once. Using the automation model, the problem always occurs, but using the lower level COM interfaces is more likely to work. The lower level interfaces are what Visual Studio uses internally, so most of the time people won't run into this problem. I use a lot of carefully ordered operations (aka hacks) to keep it working as much as possible, but every once in a while I still have to expand a folder before a file is found.
If all else fails
I'll need to know as much of the following as you can provide. These are relevant for all projects in the solution, not just the ones that aren't working for the Find in Files. For some Visual Studio operations, an exception will interrupt the remainder of the operation, so an exception while operating on project A might keep the find from reaching project B, etc.
What project types do you have in the solution? Especially if you are using 3rd party project types such as VS.Php (I think .phpproj) or nFringe (.ucproj). As a quick check, you can right click each of those projects and select Unload Project, then try the Find In Files afterwards.
What source control system are you using?
Do you have any 3rd-party add-ins installed? (Microsoft ones count if they are power toys, etc.)
Do you have any non-file-system files in the project? (Nodes in the project that don't map directly to a file on the hard drive.)
Does any project in the solution reference files on the network?
In an earlier question, I've found out that sadly Solution Folders are not real folders inside a directory.
I wonder if there is an AddOn or Macro that adds this functionality? i.e. when I create a Solution Folder, it created a real folder. When I Create a new Item (Right Click => Add => New Item) it automatically moves them into that folder, removing causes it to delete it from disk (after asking) etc.
This is for Visual Studio 2005, although we might upgrade to 2008 in a few months.
As of now, this doesn't seem to be possible in either VS 2005, 2008 and 2010 and there is no AddIn for this.
I too thought it was a strange idea. However it can be a useful tool to logically group projects in solutions without necessarily moving around folders in the file system.
I suspect you need this for revision control tool. In that case Look at AnkhSVN.
Maybe what you want is to add files to a solution folder as «links», i.e., keeping the files where they are but giving them a different organization inside the solution.
(when you add an existing file to a solution folder or to a normal project folder, if it is in a different corresponding physical folder, the file is copied).
It usually stays unnoticed, an option in the «Add > Existing Item ...» dialog where you can choose "Add As Link", instead of the "Add".
This allows to share files amongst projects, or, simply, organize them differently.
What I oftem miss is the possibility to add "virtual" folders inside a project, for organizational purposes, without breaking the namespace/folder best-practice.
Can't really get the point you want to add this function.
Sometimes you want to know if it can do this , however, the answer may be no. But it is not necessary means you can't achieve your original goal, there still a few ways to work around it without this.
Additionally, VS solution suppose to be the shortcut of your project settings and should not been included in any hard-code, the solutions may be various between the PCs and IDE envrionment.
I didn't really use VS2005 much, but have been using VS2008 for the past year.
It has a tick box for creating a solution folder when you create a new solution/project.
If you then use the "Solution Explorer" window you can create and manipulate folders and class files within them. This will actually create new directories that match.
Deletion of files from within the Solution Explorer will also delete the actual files from disk.
If you use Visual Studio 2008 and have many project files within solutions how do you keep them in sync? In other words, if you change a property in one project, how do you ensure that this property is automatically changed in other projects?
Given that enough contributors are mystified about the notion of nested solutions, I'll just work from the assumption you meant "solution with multiple projects". You give them common settings by using a project property sheet. Start with View + Other Windows + Property Manager. Open one of the nodes, right-click a configuration and choose Add New. Choose a location that makes sense for the solution, the solution directory for example. Configure the settings the way you want them.
Repeat this procedure for all other projects in your solution, now using Add Existing. Every project will inherit the settings you configured in the sheet, unless it overrides them explicitly. You may have to go back to the project properties and change an override back to "inherit".
IDE support for project property sheets is a bit flaky, be sure to save them explicitly when you make a change.
I have to say, I've not heard of "nested solutions", and I'd need a pretty compelling reason to do anything of this sort. Especially considering your question really centers on "how do I maintain duplication?" since you say the solutions will share properties. It's a cardinal rule in programming "do not duplicate thyself".
You could put the required options into a compiler response file, and use the same response file in each of your .vcproj files.
See here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3te4xt0y(VS.71).aspx
Basically, you create a text file like SharedOptions.rsp, and on each line of the file specify a different command-line compiler option. Like /I.\include or /DDEFINE or whatever.
Then in the c++ command-line property page of each project, you add this in the additional options box: #"SharedOptions.rsp".
Then when you edit the options in the text file, they will be picked up by all projects. It is possible that the property manager solution provided by nobugz is just a gui for this - I don't know, I am more of a command-line kinda guy.
I guess you've already done something about this in the last 2 months, but this answer is more for the googlers...
I ended up using global variables available within Visual Studio. These were variables like $ProjectName and the like. There are many available already within VS, they can be user-defined as well.