Related
In a team project I'm working on, setting a breakpoint in a file (say IdeasController.cs) will lead to erratic debugger behaviour if there's another file with the same name in the solution. I've reproduced the problem on several developers' workstations.
Example
I set a breakpoint in IdeasController.cs in our Web API:
Another file called IdeasController.cs exists in our separate MVC 4 web project. In the screenshot below, the debugger shows the Api->IdeasController source code, but the line highlight matches the code structure of Web->IdeasController. The breakpoint is duplicated, with one of them in the middle of a comment block.
The Breakpoint window shows the breakpoint in both files simultaneously:
On some workstations the debugger steps through the correct lines (regardless of the line highlight); on others it cheerfully steps through irrelevant lines (including comments and whitespace). I'm guessing this depends on which source file it chooses to display.
What I've tried
I've trawled the Internet. This kind of problem seems to occur when there's a mismatch between the debug file (*.pdb), the source file, and the compiled code. There are a lot of possible causes: duplicate file names (which can confuse the debugger[5]), outdated project build files, invalid solution cache, or incorrect build configuration.
These are the solutions I've found and tried:
Checked my build configuration.
Made sure the project isn't built in release mode.
Made sure we don't have code optimization enabled.
Made sure the project's debug module was loaded correctly. (Started debugging the project and checked Debug > Windows > Modules. Both assemblies are listed, not optimized, and have a symbol status of "Symbols loaded".)
Reset the debugging metadata & Visual Studio cache.
Closed Visual Studio and deleted the solution cache file (*.suo).[1]
Deleted each project's build output (the bin and obj folders). (For future reference: open the solution folder in Windows Explorer and type this in the search box: "type:folder AND (name:=bin OR name:=obj)".
Deleted the assembly cache folder (C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\dl3).[2][3]
None of these had any effect. I can rename one of the files (without renaming the class) to temporarily work around the problem, but that's far from ideal.
Where I am now
Page 14 of my latest Google search. Suggestions would be much appreciated. :)
If no better alternatives exist, you could put the breakpoint in code:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
Just don't forget to remove it afterwards...
I'm so glad I found this post, thought I was the only one and was going insane! I'm having the same problem in VS2012 with VB.Net and have tried everything the OP mentioned.
Unique naming of the files seems to be the only 100% fix that I've found. Disabling all breakpoints until the application has loaded and then re-enabling the breakpoints you need works most of the time. Breakpoints in Lambda functions can still give you issues.
I just had the exact same problem. What solved it for me was deleting the .suo files belonging to the solution that contained the affected project/source file.
I also deleted my local symbolcache but I don't think that had anything to do with it.
(My solution contains multiple projects, one file (DataAdapter.cs) in one project was affected by this (VisualStudio put my breakpoints in the pdb belonging to System.Data.DataAdapter). I opened the .csproj file directly and was able to correctly set the breakpoint.)
I had the same problem today. I was able to trace it back to the fact that I had forgotten to set the platform target to x86 while debugging. Unfortunately the others (x64 / Any CPU) can be problematic while debugging. At least VS 2008 doesn't like them. I guess this is yet another reason to stay away.
Some speculation... I think the debugger (while running a 64 bit app) somehow "steals" breakpoints away from a file in certain cases. For me it was because another assembly was loaded first which had the same file name. I was able to avoid the issue, even in 64 bit mode, if I first manually loaded the assembly with my breakpoints: Assembly.Load("MyAssemblyWithBreakpoints");
Hope this (my first stackoverflow contribution) helps.
Although renaming one of the files will work, I found that the simplest solution is to temporarily disable automatic loading of symbols for the "other" assembly.
Start the debugger and continue until you hit the erroneous breakpoint.
Find where the debugger actually set the breakpoint using the Call Stack window:
Right-click on the row with the yellow arrow and enable Show Module Names. (The row should also have the red breakpoint symbol on it.)
The assembly name is now visible on that row.
Find that assembly in the Modules window (Debug > Windows > Modules).
Right-click on the assembly and disable Always Load Automatically.
Stop the debugger.
Start debugging again.
By doing this, you're preventing the Visual Studio debugger from mapping the breakpoint to the wrong assembly. It will then load the symbols from the other [presumably] correct assembly first, therefore mapping the breakpoint to the correct assembly.
Why does this happen?
This seems to occur when two different symbol files (PDB files) — for two different assemblies — both reference a source file with the same name. Although the source files are completely different, the Visual Studio debuggger seems to get confused.
For example, imagine there are two different files both with the name IdeasController.cs. The first one compiles into assembly Api.dll, and the second one compiles into assembly Web.dll.
When the debugger loads symbols, it will either load Api.pdb or Web.pdb first. Let's say it loads Api.pdb first. Then even if you set a breakpoint in Web\IdeasController.cs, it will find a match for IdeasController.cs in Api.pdb. It then maps code from Web\IdeasController.cs to Api.dll. This won't map correctly, of course, and so you see all sorts of odd issues while debugging.
I just had this issue on Visual Studio 2017 (Version 15.9.7), were break points were skipped and the debugger just "jumped" over return statements etc.
After a while I noticed, that I've recently added a .runsettings file to the project - and it turned out, that in my case configuring the CodeCoverage data collector is causing this problem.
As soon as I removed this section:
<DataCollector friendlyName="Code Coverage" uri="datacollector://Microsoft/CodeCoverage/2.0" assemblyQualifiedName="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Coverage.DynamicCoverageDataCollector, Microsoft.VisualStudio.TraceCollector, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"> ... </DataCollector>
from the .runsettings file, it worked like a charm again.
I just backed up and deleted the file and then added back to the project, that solved the problem. I just whish i did it before going through the beforementioned list :)
You may also try to Clean and Rebuild (not Build) all projects.
I was hitting this issue in Visual Studio 2015.
I had a sub-folder with a DLL I wanted to save as Version1. It seems even after removing the reference to that DLL, and then adding a reference to another project studio pulled in the existing reference and went to the wrong source file. I removed that DLL in the sub-folder then Studio got the correct source.
I found a helpful link on [MSDN that shows how to clear prior associated source files in studio at this link][1].
Summary:
In the Solution Explorer, right click on the solution name (ex: Solution ‘TestApplication’) and select Properties This will bring up the Solution Property Pages dialog
Under Common Properties, select Debug Source Files
In the Search these paths for source code files (Visual Studio .NET 2003) / Directories containing source code (Visual Studio 2005) box, add, remove and/or reorder the directories as desired
Click the OK button
I was having the same issue. In my case both the projects had same port numbers. I was able to resolve it by changing the port number of the project whose file's breakpoints were not hitting.
My guess is that IIS Express was caching the pdb file from the second project since both files had the same name, and the projects had the same port number.
What worked for me (VS2017) was disabling this option in Tools --> Options... --> Debugging --> General: "Require sources files to exactly match the original version", which is enabled by default but I had it turned on.
That was not enough though, I also had to manually remove obj and bin folders for all projects in solution.
Delete all the .pdb files of the project where the break point is hitting wrongly. This will solve the issue.
It happened to me (in VS 2008) to have two child breakpoint with the same memory address and the same associated file.
Those breakpoints were spawned at a certain time during the running of the process.
I noticed that I had duplicated .dll files in my project folders, and resolved removing the duplicated .dll, while keeping only one .dll per name in the debugging folder structure. (As example in my case I had /bin/Example.dll and /bin/Plug-in/Example.dll both present under my debug folder structure).
I had a very similar problem. In my case the problem was a different target .net framework in one of the projects causing VS2017 to wrongly load a source file (with the same name) of another project, not the one being activated with
ObjectHandle handle = Activator.CreateInstance
Changing the project's target framework to be the same in all projects fixed it.
I had a similar issue with the breakpoint being set in another file with the same filename in a different project.
It was caused by the fact that the debugging was started for that other project, while it was not started for the project where I tried to set the breakpoint. The breakpoint creation worked correctly after doing the Debug > Start New Instance for the intended project.
I have been in this situation quite a few times where visual studio does not honor the Additional Include Directories when it comes to lib and header source files. For example, I just downloaded MyGUI source code and made sure the include directories were correct. I even put them to absolute paths, Visual Studio still complained that it could not find specific header files.
Does anybody experience the same thing with projects, and if so, is there a solution to this problem?Blockquote
EDIT: My apologies for not being able to explain fully. I know that the library and source files have different include directories. The project that I received had correct directory paths for the Additional Include Directories and Additional Library Directories but Visual Studio still failed to recognize them properly. I can right click and open the header file within Visual Studio but when compiling it still complains it cannot find the required header files. I regularly make projects relying on a framework I myself programmed, so I am quite familiar with how to set up dependencies. This is however the second time this seems to be happening. I don't recall which 3rd party project I was trying to compile last time, but Visual Studio simply refused to believe that the Additional Include Directories paths is where it should look for the header files. I am not sure how to give the complete details of this particular library (MyGUI) but I can point you to the website where you can download it to try and see if it is able to find the header files that are included in the project (if it doesn't compile, that is fine, and it is probably because of additional dependencies, but it should at least be able to find files in the common folder, especially when I put absolute paths in Additional Include Directories)
This happened to me once. It turned out the inconsistency of the Debug vs Release builds. When I modified one build, the other build was being compiled. Please set both builds with same include folders and see if it works. Good luck.
I've just spent some hours battling with failing #include paths in the compiler, inconsistencies between the compiler and intellisense.
What I finally discovered was that in the properties of the *.cpp file -- not the project, but the individual *.cpp file -- the "Additional Include Directories" property was blank. I had to explicitly set it to "inherit from from parent or project defaults" -- there's a checkbox near the lower-left corner of the dialog for editing the directory path.
I had copied this file from another project and used "Add > Existing Item..." to add it to the current project. My hypothesis was that maybe the "Existing Item" procedure skipped a property initialization step that "New Item" would normally perform. But I just tested that hypothesis by Adding another Existing and a New. Both of these files had their property set to inherit from the project, so I don't have an explanation for why my problem file was not initially set to inherit.
Anyway ... after much frustration, found and fixed that one.
I have found (stumbled) on the solution (I think). It has something to do with the character limit imposed by the OS. Although the limit should be 260, for me it falls in the below 150, see this discussion and links to it. I downloaded and unzipped the file to C:\Users\MyUserName\My Documents\Downloads\Downloads From Chrome\MyGui3.0...[and so on]. I learned quite some time ago not to try to compile projects under such long paths, but this time it completely slipped my mind as VS did not give me a warning at all and pointed me in the wrong direction. Anyway, cutting and pasting the project to D:\ fixed the issue. I am not going to checkmark the answer however until someone confirms this.
I have the same problem : Can't find .lib file even though I've added the additional include directory.
From an answer of Additional include directory in Visual studio 2015 doesn't work, I tried:
delete the .suo file and restart VS
Then it works for me.
I had this issue too. Just like sam said - this string value containing path to your framework includes has to be the same for the Debug and Release configurations. So the best way is to choose "Configuration:All Configurations" and "Platform:All Platforms" from the two context checklists on the top of the project properties window before typing it in, or copying from windows explorer adress bar.
Can you elaborate on this? If I recall, there are at least two places in Visual Studio where you can configure this:
Per-installation: Tools/Options/Projects and Solutions/VC++ Directories)
Per-project: Project/Properties/Configuration Properties/"C/C++"/General/Additional Include Directories
If you're adding the include directories per-project (#1), which I think you are, and then trying to include from another project, this will obviously not work. Try adding them at the per-installation level and see if it works.
Also, this may sound stupid/simplistic, but make sure the path is right (i.e. copy-paste into Explorer's path bar and see if the header files are in that folder).
If by lib files you mean library (.lib) files, the directory location is not specified through C/C++/General/Additional Include Directories but rather through Linker/General/Additional Library Directories.
It's logical if you think about it. C/C++ options are all compilation options, settings involved with compiling .cpp and .h files. Linker options are all linking options, settings involved with linking up .obj and .lib files.
I had the same symptoms in my c++ project. Navigating from header to header went fine, but after toggling to the source file of a header (let's say foo.cpp), then the navigation to an #include <bar.cpp> in that source file failed. I got the following error:
File 'bar.cpp' not found in the current source file's directory or in build system paths.
After research I noticed that the system build path given in the error where not extended with the include paths of the project. In other words: IntelliSense didn't know that the source file (foo.cpp) was part of the project, and therefore it didn't use the include paths of the project to search for the #include <bar.cpp>.
The fix for me was creating a file intelliSense.cpp (file name doesn't matter) that is part of the project, but excluded from the build. This file contains an include for each source file. ex:
#include <foo.cpp>
#include <bar.cpp>
...
This way IntelliSense knows that these source files are part of the project, and will therefore use the include paths of the project to resolve the #includes in those source files.
For me the issue was that .vcxproj Project file was read-only and after I added my directory to "Additional directories", the project file did not actually change. I was surprised that VS did not complain about this file being read-only.
So after I made that file write-able I could compile my project.
Here is another 'I had the same...' in vs2015.
For me it turned out that the active setting is also depending on the 'solution configuration' and 'solution platform'. That makes 4 settings which all should be identical.
That solved the problem in my case.
I realize this question is over 10 years old at this point, but I also just ran into this issue and none of the answers fit my scenario. After some playing with my IDE (VS 2019) for a few minutes I realized that the cpp file I was using had it's platform set to Win32, but the libs I was trying to use were built for x64.
As others have stated, make sure your project's configuration is set to
-"All Configurations" when you add the necessary paths to your project as that can also be an issue. I imagine my issue will not be as common, but I figured it was worth sharing. I hope this helps someone else in the future.
One more possible reason not mentioned earlier: make sure you are configuring properties of the correct project in a multi-project solution.
My problem was that I had a solution of two projects each using the same file with includes. Turns out that I correctly configured 'Additional Include Directories' only for one of two projects and totally forgot about another one. Of course error message was stating that only the second project and not the first one had problems.
Sorry for what seems like a silly question: But I've never, ever worked with boost, until tonight, and I'm finding that getting it configured seems to be harder to use than it should be.
I wanted experiment with it tonight. So I downloaded the zip file, and unzipped it to a directory here:
F:/boost_1_44_0
Then I created an empty c++ project in visual studio 2010 (not using pch either). So all I wanted to do was to include a header file. But not even a silly thing like that seems to work. Now I've been using visual studio for years, though at work we are still stuck on vs 2008 (That is another story). So usually what you do is set an include directory, and then you can include files in at will right?
So I set the global include directory to include the boost root. i.e. Property Manager -> My configuration (debug|win32) -> Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.user -> Common Properties -> C++ Directories -> Include Directories. There I added my path to f:/boost_1_44_0.
I also went to the project properties and set the C++ include directory for the project to point to the boost root like in vs 2008.
I then added a silly include declaration like so:
#include <boost/lambda/lambda.hpp>
But, amazingly it fails to compile!!! with the following error:
Error 1 error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'boost/type_traits/transform_traits.hpp': No such file or directory f:\boost_1_44_0\boost\lambda\core.hpp 25 1 test_boost
Which when I double click it, it opens up in f:\boost_1_44_0\boost\lambda\core.hpp, and takes me to this line:
#include "boost/type_traits/transform_traits.hpp"
So I have no idea what's happening. Is visual studio just not delivering up my global include paths that I set? It seems also that the include directive in core.hpp should be using angle brackets and not quotes.
If I'm doing something wrong what?
EDIT:
!! SOLVED !!
Before I didn't have all the files unzipped. I don't know what happened. So I re-downloaded the zip file, and unzipped it again. This time the zip file took much longer to unzip, and it extracted much more files: Including the missing files.
Problem solved, my hello world app compiles just fine now.
The behaviour of compilers in locating header files is implementation defined for both the <> and "" variants.
However, based on this page for VC2010, it appears the quoted form searches a superset of the angle bracket form so I'm not sure that's the problem.
I suppose it would be a silly question to ask if the following file actually existed?
f:\boost_1_44_0\boost\type_traits\transform_traits.hpp
So, a couple of investigative jobs:
Make sure that f:\boost_1_44_0\boost\type_traits\transform_traits.hpp exists.
Try changing your top-level include to use quotes.
Try changing the include in f:\boost_1_44_0\boost\lambda\core.hpp to use angle brackets.
Make sure you try all four possibilities for those last two.
Is f: a network-mounted drive? What happens if you put it all on c:?
That last one is just in case Windows is doing some shenanigans under the covers :-)
While it's a bit overkill for this, learning to use SysInternals' Process Monitor will pay off over time. It will show you what files are actually opened, and which attempts failed. Look where Visual Studio tries to read transform_traits.hpp from, and you'll probably have the answer.
I have a very similar problem as described here.
I also upgraded a mixed solution of C++/CLI and C# projects from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. And now in Visual Studio 2010 one C++/CLI project always runs out of date.
Even if it has been compiled and linked just before and F5 is hit, the messagebox "The project is out of date. Would you like to build it?" appears. This is very annoying because the DLL file is very low-tiered and forces almost all projects of the solution to rebuild.
My pdb settings are set to the default value (suggested solution of this problem).
Is it possible the get the reason why Visual Studio 2010 forces a rebuild or thinks a project is up to date?
Any other ideas why Visual Studio 2010 behaves like that?
For Visual Studio/Express 2010 only. See other (easier) answers for VS2012, VS2013, etc
To find the missing file(s), use info from the article Enable C++ project system logging to enable debug logging in Visual Studio and let it just tell you what's causing the rebuild:
Open the devenv.exe.config file (found in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ or in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\). For Express versions the config file is named V*Express.exe.config.
Add the following after the </configSections> line:
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="CPS" value="4" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics>
Restart Visual Studio
Open up DbgView and make sure it's capturing debug output
Try to debug (hit F5 in Visual Studio)
Search the debug log for any lines of the form:
devenv.exe Information: 0 : Project 'Bla\Bla\Dummy.vcxproj' not up to date because build input 'Bla\Bla\SomeFile.h' is missing.
(I just hit Ctrl+F and searched for not up to date) These will be the references causing the project to be perpetually "out of date".
To correct this, either remove any references to the missing files from your project, or update the references to indicate their actual locations.
Note: If using 2012 or later then the snippet should be:
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="CPS" value="Verbose" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics>
In Visual Studio 2012 I was able to achieve the same result easier than in the accepted solution.
I changed the option in menu Tools → Options → Projects and Solutions → Build and Run → *MSBuild project build output verbosity" from Minimal to Diagnostic.
Then in the build output I found the same lines by searching for "not up to date":
Project 'blabla' is not up to date. Project item 'c:\foo\bar.xml' has 'Copy to Output Directory' attribute set to 'Copy always'.
This happened to me today. I was able to track down the cause: The project included a header file which no longer existed on disk.
Removing the file from the project solved the problem.
We also ran into this issue and found out how to resolve it.
The issue was as stated above "The file no longer exists on the disk."
This is not quite correct. The file does exist on the disk, but the .VCPROJ file is referencing the file somewhere else.
You can 'discover' this by going to the "include file view" and clicking on each include file in turn until you find the one that Visual Studio can not find. You then ADD that file (as an existing item) and delete the reference that can not be found and everything is OK.
A valid question is: How can Visual Studio even build if it does not know where the include files are?
We think the .vcproj file has some relative path to the offending file somewhere that it does not show in the Visual Studio GUI, and this accounts for why the project will actually build even though the tree-view of the includes is incorrect.
The accepted answer helped me on the right path to figuring out how to solve this problem for the screwed up project I had to start working with. However, I had to deal with a very large number of bad include headers. With the verbose debug output, removing one caused the IDE to freeze for 30 seconds while outputting debug spew, which made the process go very slowly.
I got impatient and wrote a quick-and-dirty Python script to check the (Visual Studio 2010) project files for me and output all the missing files at once, along with the filters they're located in. You can find it as a Gist here: https://gist.github.com/antiuniverse/3825678 (or this fork that supports relative paths)
Example:
D:\...> check_inc.py sdk/src/game/client/swarm_sdk_client.vcxproj
[Header Files]:
fx_cs_blood.h (cstrike\fx_cs_blood.h)
hud_radar.h (cstrike\hud_radar.h)
[Game Shared Header Files]:
basecsgrenade_projectile.h (..\shared\cstrike\basecsgrenade_projectile.h)
fx_cs_shared.h (..\shared\cstrike\fx_cs_shared.h)
weapon_flashbang.h (..\shared\cstrike\weapon_flashbang.h)
weapon_hegrenade.h (..\shared\cstrike\weapon_hegrenade.h)
weapon_ifmsteadycam.h (..\shared\weapon_ifmsteadycam.h)
[Source Files\Swarm\GameUI - Embedded\Base GameUI\Headers]:
basepaenl.h (swarm\gameui\basepaenl.h)
...
Source code:
#!/c/Python32/python.exe
import sys
import os
import os.path
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
ns = '{http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003}'
#Works with relative path also
projectFileName = sys.argv[1]
if not os.path.isabs(projectFileName):
projectFileName = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), projectFileName)
filterTree = ET.parse(projectFileName+".filters")
filterRoot = filterTree.getroot()
filterDict = dict()
missingDict = dict()
for inc in filterRoot.iter(ns+'ClInclude'):
incFileRel = inc.get('Include')
incFilter = inc.find(ns+'Filter')
if incFileRel != None and incFilter != None:
filterDict[incFileRel] = incFilter.text
if incFilter.text not in missingDict:
missingDict[incFilter.text] = []
projTree = ET.parse(projectFileName)
projRoot = projTree.getroot()
for inc in projRoot.iter(ns+'ClInclude'):
incFileRel = inc.get('Include')
if incFileRel != None:
incFile = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(projectFileName), incFileRel))
if not os.path.exists(incFile):
missingDict[filterDict[incFileRel]].append(incFileRel)
for (missingGroup, missingList) in missingDict.items():
if len(missingList) > 0:
print("["+missingGroup+"]:")
for missing in missingList:
print(" " + os.path.basename(missing) + " (" + missing + ")")
I've deleted a cpp and some header files from the solution (and from the disk) but still had the problem.
Thing is, every file the compiler uses goes in a *.tlog file in your temp directory.
When you remove a file, this *.tlog file is not updated. That's the file used by incremental builds to check if your project is up to date.
Either edit this .tlog file manually or clean your project and rebuild.
I had a similar problem, but in my case there were no files missing, there was an error in how the pdb output file was defined: I forgot the suffix .pdb (I found out with the debug logging trick).
To solve the problem I changed, in the vxproj file, the following line:
<ProgramDataBaseFileName>MyName</ProgramDataBaseFileName>
to
<ProgramDataBaseFileName>MyName.pdb</ProgramDataBaseFileName>
I had this problem in VS2013 (Update 5) and there can be two reasons for that, both of which you can find by enabling "Detailed" build output under "Tools"->"Projects and Solutions"->"Build and Run".
"Forcing recompile of all source files due to missing PDB "..."
This happens when you disable debug information output in your compiler options (Under Project settings: „C/C++“->“Debug Information Format“ to „None“ and „Linker“->“Generate Debug Info“ to „No“: ). If you have left „C/C++“->“Program Database File Name“ at the default (which is „$(IntDir)vc$(PlatformToolsetVersion).pdb“), VS will not find the file due to a bug (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/833494/project-with-debug-information-disabled-always-rebuilds).
To fix it, simply clear the file name to "" (empty field).
"Forcing rebuild of all source files due to a change in the command line since the last build."
This seems to be a known VS bug too (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/833943/forcing-rebuild-of-all-source-files-due-to-a-change-in-the-command-line-since-the-last-build) and seems to be fixed in newer versions (but not VS2013). I known of no workaround, but if you do, by all means, post it here.
I don't know if anyone else has this same problem, but my project's properties had "Configuration Properties" -> C/C++ -> "Debug Information Format" set to "None", and when I switched it back to the default "Program Database (/Zi)", that stopped the project from recompiling every time.
Another simple solution referenced by Visual Studio Forum.
Changing configuration: menu Tools → Options → Projects and Solutions → VC++ Project Settings → Solution Explorer Mode to Show all files.
Then you can see all files in Solution Explorer.
Find the files marked by the yellow icon and remove them from the project.
It's OK.
Visual Studio 2013 -- "Forcing recompile of all source files due to missing PDB". I turned on detailed build output to locate the issue: I enabled "Detailed" build output under "Tools" → "Projects and Solutions" → "Build and Run".
I had several projects, all C++, I set the option for under project settings: (C/C++ → Debug Information Format) to Program Database (/Zi) for the problem project. However, this did not stop the problem for that project. The problem came from one of the other C++ projects in the solution.
I set all C++ projects to "Program Database (/Zi)". This fixed the problem.
Again, the project reporting the problem was not the problem project. Try setting all projects to "Program Database (/Zi)" to fix the problem.
I met this problem today, however it was a bit different. I had a CUDA DLL project in my solution. Compiling in a clean solution was OK, but otherwise it failed and the compiler always treated the CUDA DLL project as not up to date.
I tried the solution from this post.
But there is no missing header file in my solution. Then I found out the reason in my case.
I have changed the project's Intermediate Directory before, although it didn't cause trouble. And now when I changed the CUDA DLL Project's Intermediate Directory back to $(Configuration)\, everything works right again.
I guess there is some minor problem between CUDA Build Customization and non-default Intermediate Directory.
I had similar problem and followed the above instructions (the accepted answer) to locate the missing files, but not without scratching my head. Here is my summary of what I did. To be accurate these are not missing files since they are not required by the project to build (at least in my case), but they are references to files that don't exist on disk which are not really required.
Here is my story:
Under Windows 7 the file is located at %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\%. There are two similar files devenv.exe.config.config and devenv.exe.config. You want to change later one.
Under Windows 7, you don't have permission to edit this file being in program files. Just copy it somewhere else (desktop) change it and than copy it back to the program files location.
I was trying to figure out how to connect DebugView to the IDE to see the missing files. Well, you don't have to do anything. Just run it, and it will capture all the messages. Make sure Capture Events menu option is selected in Capture menu which by default should be selected.
DebugView will NOT display all the missing files at once (at least it didn't for me)! You would have DebugView running and than run the project in Visual Studio 2010. It will prompt the project out of date message, select Yes to build and DebugView will show the first file that is missing or causing the rebuild. Open the project file (not solution file) in Notepad and search for that file and delete it. You are better off closing your project and reopening it again while doing this delete. Repeat this process until DebugView no longer shows any files missing.
It's kind of helpful to set the message filter to not up to date from the DebugView toolbar button or Edit → Filter/Highlight option. That way the only messages it displays are the one that has `not up to date' string in it.
I had lots of files that were unnecessary references and removing them all fixed the issue following the above steps.
Second way to find all the missing files at once
There is a second way to find these files all at once, but it involves (a) source control and (b) integration of it with Visual Studio 2010. Using Visual Studio 2010, add your project to a desired location or dummy location in source control. It will try to add all the files, including those that don't exist on disk as well but referenced in the project file. Go to your source control software like Perforce, and it should mark these files which don't exist on disk in a different color scheme. Perforce shows them with a black lock on them. These are your missing references. Now you have a list of them all, and you can delete all of them from your project file using Notepad and your project would not complain about being out of date.
For me it was the presence of a non-existing header file on "Header Files" inside the project. After removing this entry (right-click > Exclude from Project) first time recompiled, then directly
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 0 failed, 5 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
and no attempt of rebuilding without modification was done. I think is a check-before-build implemented by VS2010 (not sure if documented, could be) which triggers the "AlwaysCreate" flag.
If you are using the command-line MSBuild command (not the Visual Studio IDE), for example if you are targetting AppVeyor or you just prefer the command line, you can add this option to your MSBuild command line:
/fileLoggerParameters:LogFile=MyLog.log;Append;Verbosity=diagnostic;Encoding=UTF-8
As documented here (warning: usual MSDN verbosity). When the build finishes, search for the string will be compiled in the log file created during the build, MyLog.log.
I'm using Visual Studio 2013 Professional with Update 4 but didn't find resolution with any of the other suggestions, however, I did manage to resolve the issue for my Team project.
Here's what I did to cause the problem -
Created a new class object (Project -> Add Class)
Renamed the file via Solution Explorer and clicked yes when asked if I wanted to automatically rename all references to match
Here's what I did to solve the problem -
Go to Team Explorer Home
Click Source Control Explorer
Drill into the folder where all of the class/project files are
Found the ORIGINAL filename in the list and deleted it via right-click
Build
If this is the case for you then just be extra sure that you're deleting the phantom file rather than the actual one you want to keep in the project.
I had this problem and found this:
http://curlybrace.blogspot.com/2005/11/visual-c-project-continually-out-of.html
Visual C++ Project continually out-of-date (winwlm.h macwin32.h rpcerr.h macname1.h missing)
Problem:
In Visual C++ .Net 2003, one of my projects always claimed to be out of date, even though nothing had changed and no errors had been reported in the last build.
Opening the BuildLog.htm file for the corresponding project showed a list of PRJ0041 errors for these files, none of which appear on my system anywhere:
winwlm.h macwin32.h rpcerr.h macname1.h
Each error looks something like this:
MyApplication : warning PRJ0041 : Cannot find missing dependency 'macwin32.h' for file 'MyApplication.rc'.
Your project may still build, but may continue to appear out of date until this file is found.
Solution:
Include afxres.h instead of resource.h inside the project's .rc file.
The project's .rc file contained "#include resource.h". Since the resource compiler does not honor preprocessor #ifdef blocks, it will tear through and try to find include files it should be ignoring. Windows.h contains many such blocks. Including afxres.h instead fixed the PRJ0041 warnings and eliminated the "Project is out-of-date" error dialog.
In my case one of the projects contains multiple IDL files. The MIDL compiler generates a DLL data file called 'dlldata.c' for each of them, regardless of the IDL file name. This caused Visual Studio to compile the IDL files on every build, even without changes to any of the IDL files.
The workaround is to configure a unique output file for each IDL file (the MIDL compiler always generates such a file, even if the /dlldata switch is omitted):
Right-click the IDL file
Select Properties - MIDL - Output
Enter a unique file name for the DllData File property
I spent many hours spent tearing out my hair over this. The build output wasn't consistent; different projects would be "not up to date" for different reasons from one build to the next consecutive build.
I eventually found that the culprit was DropBox (3.0.4). I junction my source folder from ...\DropBox into my projects folder (not sure if this is the reason), but DropBox somehow "touches" files during a build. Paused syncing and everything is consistently up-to-date.
There are quite a few potential reasons and - as noted - you need to first diagnose them by setting MSBuild verbosity to 'Diagnostic'. Most of the time the stated reason would be self explanatory and you'd be able to act on it immediatelly, BUT occasionally MSBuild would erroneously claim that some files are modified and need to be copied.
If that is the case, you'd need to either disable NTFS tunneling or duplicate your output folder to a new location. Here it is in more words.
This happened to me multiple times and then went away, before I could figure out why. In my case it was:
Wrong system time in the dual boot setup!
Turns out, my dual boot with Ubuntu was the root cause!! I've been too lazy to fix up Ubuntu to stop messing with my hardware clock. When I log into Ubuntu, the time jumps 5 hours forward.
Out of bad luck, I built the project once, with the wrong system time, then corrected the time. As a result, all the build files had wrong timestamps, and VS would think they are all out of date and would rebuild the project.
Most build systems use data time stamps to determine when rebuilds should happen - the date/time stamp of any output files is checked against the last modified time of the dependencies - if any of the dependencies are fresher, then the target is rebuilt.
This can cause problems if any of the dependencies somehow get an invalid data time stamp as it's difficult for the time stamp of any build output to ever exceed the timestamp of a file supposedly created in the future :P
For me, the problem arose in a WPF project where some files had their 'Build Action' property set to 'Resource' and their 'Copy to Output Directory' set to 'Copy if newer'. The solution seemed to be to change the 'Copy to Output Directory' property to 'Do not copy'.
msbuild knows not to copy 'Resource' files to the output - but still triggers a build if they're not there. Maybe that could be considered a bug?
It's hugely helpful with the answers here hinting how to get msbuild to spill the beans on why it keeps building everything!
If you change the Debugging Command arguments for the project, this will also trigger the project needs to be rebuilt message. Even though the target itself is not affected by the Debugging arguments, the project properties have changed. If you do rebuild though, the message should disappear.
I had a similar issue with Visual Studio 2005, and my solution consisted of five projects in the following dependency (first built at top):
Video_Codec depends on nothing
Generic_Graphics depends on Video_Codec
SpecificAPI_Graphics depends on Generic_Graphics
Engine depends on Specific_Graphics
Application depends on Engine.
I was finding that the Video_Codec project wanted a full build even after a full clean then rebuild of the solution.
I fixed this by ensuring the pdb output file of both the C/C++ and linker matched the location used by the other working projects. I also switched RTTI on.
Another one on Visual Studio 2015 SP3, but I have encountered a similar issue on Visual Studio 2013 a few years back.
My issue was that somehow a wrong cpp file was used for precompiled headers (so I had two cpp files that created the precompiled headers). Now why did Visual Studio change the flags on the wrong cpp to 'create precompiled headers' without my request I have no clue, but it did happen... maybe some plugin or something???
Anyway, the wrong cpp file includes the version.h file which is changed on every build. So Visual Studio rebuilds all headers and because of that the whole project.
Well, now it's back to normal behavior.
I had a VC++ project that was always compiling all files and had been previously upgraded from VS2005 to VS2010 (by other people). I found that all cpp files in the project except StdAfx.cpp were set to Create (/Yc) the precompiled header. I changed this so that only StdAfx.cpp was set to create the precompiled header and the rest were set to Use (/Yu) the precompiled header and this fixed the problem for me.
I'm on Visual Studio 2013 and just updated to the Windows 10 May 2019 update and compiling suddenly had to be redone every time, regardless of changes. Tried renaming the pch to ProjectName instead of TargetName, looked for missing files with the detailed log and that Python script, but in the end it was my time was not synced with MS's servers (by like milliseconds).
What resolved this for me was
"Adjust date and time" in the control panel
"Sync Now"
Now my projects don't need to be recompiled for no reason.
I think that you placed some newline or other whitespace. Remove it and press F5 again.
The .NET projects are always recompiled regardless. Part of this is to keep the IDE up to date (such as IntelliSense). I remember asking this question on an Microsoft forum years ago, and this was the answer I was given.
I'm trying to build a small VS 2005 solution I've just checked out of source control, and I'm getting this easy to understand error:
...\AssemblyInfo.cs' could not be
opened ('The system cannot find the
file specified. ') (The file is fairly
obviously missing)
Because this file's automatically generated, I've never paid it much heed before, and in VS 2003 (which I still work with day to day - pity me) it never seems to matter if it's missing.
So 2 questions:
1. How can I get VS 2005 to regenerate the file.
2. Could anyone explain to me in a couple of sentences what the assembly info file is all about, why it's generated, why it's a good idea to have an automatically generated file critical to my solution building etc etc.
Thanks - Andrew.
Edit: OK, I've googling some more, and it's probably significant that this is in an Nunit Test Project.
Update: Deleting the reference in solution explorer an Alex suggested did the trick, and the project now builds, but I'm not entirely happy with that as a solution. If the file is so unimportant, why is it generated in the first place? And if the file does perform a vital task, what am I missing out on by just deleting it?
Also, is it even possible to get it back? Either by getting VS to regenerate it, or by manually hacking one up (possibly using another as a template)?
This file contains assembly-wide settings like assembly version, name, etc. It is automatically generated when you change those settings using properties pages of the project. You should have this file in the project with sort of transparent icon (I think it is in resource folder or something like this by default). Locate it in the project tree and delete it. Visual studio will stop looking for it during build.
PS: assuming the path starts with .. and not ... then this file should be located one folder up from the project in the source control. So you can try looking there.