The problem with renaming files is that if you want to take advantage of Visual Studio refactoring, you really need to do it from inside Visual Studio.
But most (not all*) version control system also want to be the ones doing the renaming.
One solution is to use integrated source control, but this is not always available, and in some cases is pretty clunky.
I'd personally be more comfortable using source control separately, outside of Visual Studio, but I'm not sure how to manage this question of file renames.
So, for those of you that use Visual Studio, which source control do you use? Do you use a VS integration (which one?) and otherwise, how do you resolve this renaming problem?
(* git is smart enough to work it out for itself)
I use SVN (TortiseSVN as the client) and use the Repair Move command from the commit dialog heavily. This allows me to rename the files within VS and resolve the rename when I'm ready to commit to keep version history.
As far as using the VS integration, like you, I find all VS integration clunky and do not use it.
mercurial usually prefers to do the renaming via hg rename however it can also detect renames from an outside source by using hg addremove -s 100 (or less than 100 if you want to match a rename with alterations) so clearly you can let VS do the rename and get mercurial to catchup with addremove.
We use SVN (TortoiseSVN to be exact), and i am always bothered with the renaming problem. The simplest solution i've found is to remove the files from the project, rename them via TSVN and add them back to the project. You have to manually update includes for renamed header files, but this is relatively easy using find&replace.
We use Team Foundation Server, and it works with no problems. I've also found that moving to using a fully integrated client has improved my workflow, as I don't need to flip between applications just to do trivial tasks.
We develop "Plastic SCM" and the Visual Studio Package supports move operations. But I see your point, I'm getting more and more comfortable with the idea of not having plugins/packages and then have the version control working behind the scenes and simply detecting what happened without having to be "plugged in" into the IDE. In fact we're working on it for next release...
Besides the above advice, for Visual Studio 2008 I found that after making all global changes to any file being renamed from within VS, including right clicking the file and renaming it, as well as a global search and replace for all strings, replacing the old file name with the new file name, you must, if the file is the initial startup file, right click and select it as "set as default page". Otherwise you'll may well get the "The resource cannot be found." error on runtime.
Related
I often need to return to a previous milestone.
There is a vicious cycle: my error is revealed only during debugging, but I can't step back because the debugger has saved my project.
In simple projects I always used to make a copy of my cpp file (just keep ctrl and drug your file a bit).
But now projects has become more complicated (with header files).
I have tried to use save solution as. But it seems as if it is just renaming the sln file without making a copy of the whole project.
So, what shall I do? Copy the whole project as I did with the file?
The question seems a bit clumsy but it really troubles me: what elegant decision is there?
You can use software versioning systems like SVN or Git to undo the savings and return to previous point in your project, also there are some extensions for visual studio like ankhsvn and Gitextention that you can use.
If you are using vs 2010, you can disable saving on build event from Tools>Options>Projects and Solutions>Build and Run
Shamefully, we use TFS at work for a C# project. I wish we could move to svn or git, but we can't change that. All of us working on the project hate the automatic check-out "feature" of TFS, so we checked in our solution and project files as unbound from TFS.
Now, whenever we open the project, we get the following message:
The solution you have opened is under source control but not currently configured for integrated source control in Visual Studio. Would you like to bind this solution to source control now?
Is there a way to disable this message while keeping the solution unbound from the buggy and annoying integrated source control?
The message you reference has nothing to do with TFS, it has to do with integrated source control within Visual Studio. If you really want to get rid of this message, go to Tools->Options->Source Control and set your source control provider to "none."
Then, go and download the Team Foundation Power Tools and enable the shell access, and you'll be able to right click within Windows Explorer and check in from there. If you don't want to do that, you can do your check-ins from the TF.EXE command line.
But seriously, if you don't like the automatic check-out, then just turn that off. You have the option of having TFS automatically check out, prompt you for check out, or do nothing and leave the files in a read-only state until you explicitly check them out.
Another possibility could be to move to a 'git-tfs' combined solution. You would move your team to git, and sync with TFS on a regular basis. This way, only one person has to live with the TFS annoyances.
I have no experience with that, but apparently it has been tried before
If you like the svn/git model better, then I honestly wonder why you would want to turn off automatic checkout? You can configure VS to silently check out files on edit. This comes pretty close to the svn way of working, no?
Also, ensure that the TFS server is configured to allow multiple checkout on all text-based files, and you should be good to go. You can also install your own diff and merge tools (e.g. TortoiseDiff/TortoiseMerge) if you want.
I am working on a large source base (approx 15K files) decomposed into about 25 projects. I want to keep the source in perforce (and am evaluating perforce to that end) but due to complications in the setup it isn't possible for me to keep the visual studio projects in source control, I know in theory the answer to this is to check the projects in, but that isn't feasible (we would end up with projects for several versions of VS checked in, and additionally several variants of each of these, instead they are generated automatically and this setup works very well).
Is there a way to get VS to checkout files for editing as it goes without adding the project to perforce, to avoid the user having to go to the perforce client and manually check out each file for editing as they go? Alternatively (and even better) is there a way to get VS to recognise that the files in a project are under source control, without having to add the project to source control also?
I know we could also take the tack of having every user check out for editing all files they might potentially want to edit ahead of time, then revert unmodified files before submitting their changes, is there a performance penalty in perforce in taking this approach?
In your case, I'd suggest not using the visual studio integration for Perforce.
You can either add Perforce commands to the Tools Menu, or try Nifty Perforce from Google:
http://code.google.com/p/niftyplugins/
One option is to use Perforce as if you were disconnected from the server and reconcile your changes later, rather than telling Perforce everything you do before you do it. (This is roughly equivalent to the workflow in CVS or Subversion.) You would synchronize your working copy, go off and develop, and then ask Perforce to figure out what you did while it wasn't watching.
Perforce has a nice document describing the process: Working Disconnected From The Perforce Server
One thing the document doesn't mention is the allwrite clientspec attribute, which marks all files in your working directory as writable instead of only the files you have checked out.
For the sake of completeness: There is a new tool for your wish called P4VS. I like it better that P4SCC which never worked for me as I wanted.
What's the best way to use Bazaar (bzr) as the version control system in Visual Studio 2008?
The best I found is TortoiseBZR and the command-line - nothing integrated with VS.
I wouldn't even bother with TortoiseBZR; bzr is very easy to use from the command line.
BTW: The last time I tried it, TortoiseBZR used to lock up windows explorer while it went off to a remote repository to determine the status of files, not sure if it still does this ... ? See also this SO question.
There is no native integration to Visual Studio, but there is good GUI application, called Bazaar Explorer. It's the part of official standalone installer, and also can be installed separately as bzr plugin.
Old, I know, but since this shows up on the top for Google search, the best way to integrate is a combination of Visual Studio's External Tools, and tbzrcommand.exe and bzr.exe. You can set up things like Status to go to the output window, and things like Diff to go to the tbzrcommand GUI window.
(I'm assuming you've installed TortoiseBzr here.) Using these as examples, in VS open Tools->External Tools, then Add. For the program, browse to the Bazaar directory and select bzr.exe. Name the command Status. For arguments, type "status" (sans quotes). Select that the output should be directed to the vs output window, that the command should be terminated when complete. Open a simple file under code control and add a space somewhere and save, then under external tools, choose status to verify that it shows up as a pending commit action. (You can add these to their own menu later, once they work.)
Next, add another external command and name this Diff. For the program, browse to the Bazaar directory, and choose tbzrcommand.exe. For arguments, type "--command=diff --file=$(TargetPath)" (sans quotes). Leave the options all unchecked. Then, for the file above that you added a space, select it in the solution explorer window and choose Tools->Diff. A TortoiseBzr window should appear (along with an annoying DOS window), and show differences between the working version and the latest commit version of the file.
For something like a commit, which requires a comment, you'll have to put in arguments like "commit -m " (sans quotes) and check the box to prompt for arguments (to allow the entry of a message for the commit).
There's a project in Launchpad, but it looks like it's abandoned, and when I downloaded it, I couldn't get it to build.
This is something I'm interested in myself. Tracking adds, drops and renames automatically in an IDE is the way to go. Seeing status is nice too.
If you don't need the SCC integration, just the ability to use the tool, try the setup in this article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/Bazaar4VS.aspx
I've ported VisualHG to work with Bazaar:
https://launchpad.net/visualbzr
It's currently an alpha version, and has only been built and tested for Visual Studio 2010, but common operations should work OK.
Edit:
This plugin hasn't moved on much, but it does now support Visual Studio 2012.
Unified SCC has support for bzr. It is commercial but claims to be free for OSS projects.
UnifiedSCC
I too was trying to use this, and found that visual studio has an option of "External Tools", which can be found under the tools tool bar. Upon trial, I found that one could create a link to the bzr.exe (or any other exe tools you may want to use). Then, it asks for arguements. It is here where you can begin to use magic.
For me, to commit changes directly, I have created an arguement of commit -m "", which commits without message to the bzr branch if one exists in the working directory (to achieve this, you also have to change the starting directory to solution directory).
I also created a push command to my launchpad using similar idealogy
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.