VS corrupted .sln file? - visual-studio

When I try to open my .sln file, Visual Studio quits on me. I can open it by opening up TFS, getting a specific version, choosing the latest version, forcing an overrwrite, opening up the .sln file, and then ignoring an 'incompatible doc message".
However, I would like to know what's wrong and how it can be fixed, in case some day I can't do this.
How can this be fixed?

I would think this is more likely to be the .suo (which is a hidden file). These are know to corrupt (and this has been true since at least VC++ V6). Deleting it will clear all sorts of odd/erroneous behaviour in VS.
(The .suo holds local settings: which files are open and layout, breakpoints, bookmarks, ... only: nothing that really matters to the solution or projects.)
For Visual Studio 2015 and 2017: rather than being in the same location as the solution (.sln) file, it is now held in a, hidden, folder called .vs in the folder containing the solution file.
In Visual Studio 2022, the .suo is in \.vs\MySolution\v17\

Have you tried creating a new sln and importing all the projs? if it doesn't solve the corruption, it may point to a project with a problem.

Get copies of both versions of the file and use your favorite dif tool to see what's changed. sln files are xml (i.e. human readable), so it isn't too hard to figure out what happened.

Difficult to tell. A sln file is quite simple structured, if you open it with a text editor,
check is everything looks all right to you.
Seems to me that the sln file could be in a conflicted state.

Related

Visual Studio not showing all Projects in solution

I'm not sure why, but Visual Studio is not showing all the projects in my solution. I need them to show so I can set as default project under solution explorer. I'm not seeing a fix for this issue in a general internet search. The closest I see is VS not showing files folders, but this is different than my issue. Hopefully there is an easy way to fix it, without adding things again piecemeal. My co-workers can see their complete set of projects in solution explorer so it must be a corruption in my workspace.
Open your ".sln" project file using Notepad.
In this file you can observe listed projects like below
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "test.myProject.Data", "test.myProject.Data\test.myProject.csproj", "{6D7F7B84-F3BD-4A19-A069-D144C345B887}"
EndProject
Please add if there any missing projects. If you have old back up or co-workers file, Just copy and paste missing projects to this file.
In my case it works !!
close vs , delete .vs folder then open vs again. it works for me.
I found that re-adding the existing project to the solution worked for me!
I had to copy out changed files in my workspace, fix my permissions/ownership on my directory (it was no owner instead of me), re-do the mapped drive the workspace was on, re-do the shortcut to the Visual Studio project (even though it was supposed to theoretically be the same place I mapped), re-pull the project down, and copy my changes in again. At this point Visual Studio had the missing solutions in it again so I could set startup project and run the debugger. I'm not sure how the ownership/permissions got messed up. I think at one point the other office had a server go down, and maybe my permissions/ownership got mixed up then. I'm not sure why VS wasn't showing the missing projects, but it's fixed after doing the above.
I had the same issue where my colleague saw 1 more project on his computer.
I deleted my .sln file and got the exact same version as he. Problem was still the same.
Solution was: I had an unloaded project. Apparently this is safed in a local user setting file (probably the .suo file). I looked for the unloaded project and loaded it again.
Close the VStudio entire project, go to the main project folder and click on the .sln file to load the entire project agian.
go to solution explorer see which are having (unload), right click and load project with dependencies
sometimes check if the project startup has changed, if changed just right click on the related project and set as project startup
This .sln file structure breakdown offers a great insight on how projects are able to be found and populated into the project hierarchy. My .sln file had lost all its project persistence blocks and thus I had 0 projects under my solution. I copied the blocks from a a previous git commit and this fixed it. I still don't know why the blocks disappeared or the whole .sln file changed
If the other solutions didn't work for you, then try this.
You can add the missing project to the solution file using the dotnet command. To do so, go to the root folder of your project and run the following command from the terminal:
dotnet sln add ProjectLibrary/ProjectLibrary.csproj
The ProjectLibrary/ProjectLibrary.csproj is the path to your missing project.
You can open the .sln file to confirm if the prject has been added. You should see something like:
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "ProjectLibrary", "ProjectLibrary\ProjectLibrary.csproj", "{F042B1DB-F887-44CC-941A-76569A86AF75}"
EndProject
Hope this helps.
I had the same issue. After opening the Visual Studio in Administrator mode it started to work.
Search for VS->Right click-> "Run as administrator"

"The project file was unloaded" when moving VS2010 project to another server

I have moved a Visual Studio 2010 project to another server by copying and pasting the folder contents into another folder on a different server.
My understand was that VS2010 handled this well; when I have done this locally it has never been an issue.
Now I get an error like this:
When I right click and "Reload project", the list of files briefly appears before disappearing again, giving the original error.
Am I doing something wrong?
I experienced the same problem today. Here is what I did and worked for me :
Open the .sln file.
Right click on the project folder and click Reload project.
You will see the projects and folders that you originally had.
You will see .xml publish file . Double click it .. You should be good to go now.
I had this problem today and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.
Your problem is most likely that your solution was originally made with a Visual Studio configuration that contained support for certain project types (such as "Windows Service" or some other exotic project type). The Visual Studio configuration you are using to import your solution does not have that support. In other words,
there is probably nothing wrong with your solution,
there is probably nothing wrong with your project,
there is probably nothing wrong with any of the files (as you mentioned they do display briefly, giving you a second of hope)
Just run the installer on the new Visual Studio and make sure the support is enabled for all the project types you need and try again.
In my case the problem was the .vbproj file had somehow been corrupted so the normal xml code was replaced with a long string of null characters. I noticed this thanks to a file that was generated in the same folder as the project file when I tried to open the project - it was called 'UpgradeLog.htm'. This had an entry saying ' Error on line 1. Expected '<' but found 'null character'.'.. suggests there may have been a recent update to Visual Studio that I hadn't noticed?
Luckily I could use my source control system to revert back to a slightly earlier version - I guess it shows how important it is to have backups!
In my case, I saw similar message (Projected was unloaded) and all I had to do was simply re-launching Visual Studio (2017) in Admin mode and the problem went away. Per one of the above answers, I tried to right-click and selected Reload but got a warning that, due to required access to IIS on the machine, I had to launch VS in Admin mode.
HTH
Found this answer and it worked for me.
Note:Sometimes, the path in File path property is grayed out and you are unable to get to the Browse button. In this case try deleting .suo files. Don’t worry, these files gets recreated when you rebuild the solution / project.
http://www.howtosolutions.net/2013/02/solving-project-file-error-could-not-find-part-of-the-path-with-visual-studio/
I had the same problem. I fix path to .csproj files in the .sln file with a text editor and now it is all ok.
Open Visual Studio as Administrator

Tell visual studio to close the documents that have been deleted outside of the IDE

I'm working with Visual Studio 2010 Professional and use git with Git Extensions as a version control system. When I checkout a branch that involves different versions of the files which I'm working on, VS2010 prompt me with a message that says: "this file has been modified outside of the source editor. Do you want to reload it?" I click yes to all, and get the right version of the files. Until here everything goes as expected.
The problem comes when I checkout a branch that involves files to be deleted. Files that in that branch do not exist yet/anymore. If one of these is opened in the editor, it continues there and you can keep writing on it and then save it.
I know the files can't disappear from the project tree, because we're not keeping track of the project files (at least they get in Project File explorer an exclamation mark telling you that the file doesn't exist anymore). What I want is Visual Studio to close each file that no longer exist. Is there a way to do that? Or does someone have an idea to achive this workflow?
Closing and opening Visual Studio again does the trick, actually does exactly what I want.. But it would be good to avoid it.
Thank you
I think you have forgotten to include the project file vbproj or csproj in git

How to prevent generation of .csproj.user?

Certain user specific configurations are stored in .csproj.user. How do I tell MS Visual Studio to store this information in the .csproj every time?
I had the same problem and the only solution I could come up with was to manually edit the .csproj.user file, cut the configuration I wanted and paste in the .csproj file. It worked fine, despite being a somewhat user-hostile solution.
You can't. Visual Studio stores the user-specific settings in the .csproj.user file, and the build settings in the .csproj file. This is to allow multiple users to work on a project, which is critical when working in a team with source control.
That being said, you can always delete the .user file, and it will be recreated, at any point in time.

Visual Studio 2008 always saves SLN file on exit

Got a bit of a weird problem. I'm checking a solution out of TFS source control, and not making any changes to it; just opening it using the SLN file. If I then close Visual Studio (or do a Save All), Visual Studio prompts me to save the SLN file. Even if I do (by overwriting it, it's a read-only file), it continues to do this every time I open and close the solution, as if I'd added a project or something. Why would Visual Studio do this? What's causing it to think the solution has changed and needs saving?
OK, problem solved. As we're using TFS for source control, you're meant to check in the SLN file's corresponding .vssscc file. As we'd checked in the .vspscc for the various projects the SLN file pointed to but not the SLN's .vssscc file, Visual studio didn't consider the solution to be bound. :-)
Fixed it by going to File | Source Control | Change Source Control, then binding the SLN file to the solution's root dir on the TFS server. This created the solution's .vssscc file, which we've checked into source control. Subsequent checkouts now don't cause the problem.
I would start by letting it save the solution and then doing a visual diff of the version that it saved vs the one held in source control to see what the problem is. It could just be white space formatting. Also, are you the only person suffering this (if others are using the same solution?)

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