How to prevent Visual Studio from adding generated files to source control - visual-studio

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.

Related

Prevent VS from checking out App.config from SourceSafe when I am making local changes to it

I am working with a project (shared by a small team via SourceSafe source control) with four .config files in it:
App.config is the configuration file that is eventually used when the program is executed.
The other three files are essentially templates that I can quickly copy & paste into App.config.
App.Integration.config and App.Release.config are valid for all team members. For instance, it refers to integration or production database servers on the network.
App.Debug.config is a template with settings that are valid only for my machine, e.g. because it refers to my local copy of a development database.
Background: Why am I managing multiple configuration files manually? ASP.NET web projects automatically support multiple configuration files, but other project types don't. I also know that this could be automated by adding a custom MSBuild task to the project file; however, this might break or confuse later build steps, such as ClickOnce deployment.
Obviously, I do not want to check in "my" local version of App.Debug.config into SourceSafe, which is why I told Source Safe to ignore that file. For the same reason, I have SourceSafe ignore App.config, because that file is often going to be edited, e.g. when switching from the local configuration file to the integration environment's version. If everyone checked in their versions of these files, they would be seen by all other developers.
However, if I understand correctly, this leads to SourceSafe no longer keeping a copy of these files at all, so if someone checks out a fresh copy of the project, these two files will be missing.
Is there a way to have an "initial" copy of e.g. App.config in my SourceSafe repository, but at the same time prevent Visual Studio from checking out the file when it is locally edited by a developer?
Background: Why am I using SourceSafe at all? It's not my decision, and I can do nothing about it in the short term.
You can use the pin feature to keep a copy but not allow checkout.
In solution explorer, locate your file (e.g. App.config), right click on it to call menu "Show History...", select a version of your file and then click button "Pin".

Visual Studio Bindings - Bound and unbound sc in different solutions

I have a dev team that is split in mentality of using visual studio source control bindings. Half would like the integration and half would not. Is there a way to add a solution only binding setup so each team could use a different solution based on their preferences?
There is no painless solution to this problem. The reason being that Microsoft made the monumentally bad decision to embed source control information into .NET solution and project files.
Let's say Dick wants to use the SCC plugin and Jane doesn't. Dick adds a project to version control via the plugin and information like this will be written to the solution file:
GlobalSection(SourceCodeControl) = preSolution
SccNumberOfProjects = 2
SccLocalPath0 = .
SccProjectUniqueName1 = someApp\\someApp.csproj
SccLocalPath1 = someApp
EndGlobalSection
and some garbage like this will be added to the project(s) files:
<SccProjectName>SAK</SccProjectName>
<SccLocalPath>SAK</SccLocalPath>
<SccAuxPath>SAK</SccAuxPath>
<SccProvider>SAK</SccProvider>
In addition, some files will be strewn about the project folder tree (MSSCCPRJ.SCC files in the solution and project folders, a *.vssscc in the solution folder, and *.vspscc files in the project folders).
The extra files are not a problem as long as Dick doesn't check them into source control (although the plugin is always going to want to check in those .vssscc and .vspscc files). However, the source control information that gets written to the solution and project files will always be an annoyance for Jane. Whenever she opens the solution, she will be nagged by this message:
and then this one:
Should she choose the option to "Permanently remove source control association bindings", the source control information will be removed from the solution and project files and she will be happy again. However, Dick's SCC plugin won't work anymore and he'll probably rebind the projects to source control and an office riot will ensue.
To sum it up, you can share .NET project between those who use the SCC plugin and those who don't, but one or more parties are going to have to endure some annoyances because Microsoft decided to add source control information to .NET project files (such a bad decision, this wasn't a problem in Visual Studio 6).
I'm not absolutely sure if I got you right. I assume that half of your team wants to use the Visual Studio plugin to access Perforce and the other half doesn't.
This is possible. You have to make sure to never check in the MSSCCPRJ.SCC file created by the plugin. This is the local bindings information and will not work on everybody's workstation.
On the other hand side, the *.vssscc files can and should go into Perforce.
Using the plugin has one big advantage, though: The plugin knows which files to check in and which to omit. Especially when adding new projects, it's a common mistake to forget to check in the newly created files when using the Perforce visual client instead of the plugin.
You have to make sure to never check in the MSSCCPRJ.SCC file created
by the plugin.
I removed *.scc files but Visual Studio prevent me use others Source Controls Plugin's except saved into solution and project files.

Visual Studio - Avoid Unnecessary File Replication

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.

Branching in Visual Source Safe

We need to create a new project in Visual Source safe. This project is actually a newer version of an existing project. Following is what we want.
All files of existing project are copied to new project.
Files in both projects are not shared. (Changing a file in one project should not affect the same file in other project)
All Visual Studio solutions and projects are bound to new project in source safe.
Whats is the best and easiest way of doing this?
You should use the share and branch option...
MSDN help (works with folders as well as files)
This will break the link between the two copies meaning that you can change files in one project without affecting the other one.

Adding Visual Studio Project references to SVN

I checked in a project to SVN with about 15 references from one dev box then checked out the same project on a second dev box but most of the reference files are missing. Is it possible to checkin the reference files automatically?
Version control will only keep track of the actual files underneath the working folder. If the third party libraries are installed elsewhere on the machine, they will not be included in the source control at all.
You'll have to do one of these:
Ensure that the 3rd party libraries (eg, nunit, enterprise libraries) are installed on all required development machines.
Don't install the libraries using the normal installers at all, instead, add the individual dll's and other resources to source control as Vendor Branches, then bring them under your project by either branching them into your project location, or by adding an svn:externals definition.
Copy the required reference files under into your source locations, add them to source control and reference them from there.
I think it's hard for Visual Studio SCC tools to determine wether or not these files should be automatically added. If you're using the first scenario Jim T described, you definitely don't want that to happen.

Resources