How can I figure out, how many files needs to be recompiled before I start the build process.
Sometimes I don't remember how many basic header files I changed so a Rebuild All would be better than a simple build. There seams to be no option for this, but IMHO it must be possible (f.e. XCode give me this information).
Update:
My problem is not, that Visual Studio doesn't know what to compile. I need to know how much it will compile so that I can decide if I can make a quick test with my new code or if I should write more code till I start the "expensive" build process. Or if my boss ask "When can I have the new build?" the best answer is not "It is done when it is done!".
It's really helpful when the IDE can say "compile 200 of 589 files" instead of "compile x,y, ..."
Could your version control tell you this? For example in Subversion "Check for modifications" will list everything changed since your last checkin (although not since your last build)
Mind you, doesn't "build" automatically do exactly that? (build only what's changed)?
Usually Visual Studio is good at knowing what needs to be compiled for you.
If you have multiple projects in a solution then just make sure your solution dependencies are set up correctly and it should just work when you hit Build.
Related
I am new to TFS. (using TFS 2012 and vs 2008)I may be asking some very basic questions. How to make the TFS build fail when number of warnings is increased compared to the last build? I am willing to write vbscript/perl for it.
Finally I also want track also is there a new warning type compared to the last build?
If some guidance is provided.
Will it better be integrated as postbuild event?
Do i need to create a new Build Quality(in msft jargon)?
Check below article explaining how to do that. It has link to the Xaml file as well.
http://blog.stangroome.com/2011/03/28/fail-a-build-when-the-warning-count-increases/
You might be able to use something similar for your second question about warning type as well.
I am working with a VS2010 solution we have inherited. It has approx 300 projects. Medium term I will try to break this down into multiple solutions, but I can't do that immediately.
One immediate problem is that if I do 2 consecutive builds, the second still does a lot of work, which says to me that something is wrong with the "make" configuration. What is the best way of analysing the build config to determine incorrect dependencies or other problems?
Is there a tool for doing this or shall I try and make my own? Thanks.
(The solution was migrated through VS2005 and VS2008 before getting to VS2010 which probably didn't help the build config)
The 'lot of work' from the second build could be just actions in the PreBuild steps, which are always executed. Make sure you get at least 'normal' instead of 'minimal' build output (Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Build and Run). Just looking at the second output should give you the information you need. As far as I know there's no tool to compare to build log files, but it shouldn't be too hard to write it yourself.
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Visual Studio keeps building everything
Visual Studio 2008 keeps rebuilding the entire project as if every implementation file was modified. This happens even if no files were modified. Hit build button twice in row, and the entire projects gets rebuild twice. This doesn't happens on another box. The OS is Windows Vista.
This is very annoying. What could cause such a behavior?
It is a C++ project.
Some ideas to try...
As #David Paxson said in the comments, with some languauges (e.g. C#, VB) all the projects will appear to be "built", but the compiler will skip through the ones that don't need to be built much more quickly, even though they are still listed in the output. So it may simply appear to be rebuilding everything. Also, with C#, Visual Studio sometimes runs the project several times in a row, and sometimes it will decide for no obvious reason that it needs to "rebuild" the projects, but this only usually takes a few seconds extra unless you have hundreds of projects.
Restart Visual Studio (or even reboot the PC entirely).
Do a "Rebuild All" of the entire solution to clean out any old cached information and ensure all the output files are up to date.
If you use source control, then even better is to check in all of your changes, then delete your old source code folder (or safer, rename it somewhere out of the way until you know you don't need it) and force-get all the latest source code from source control again. This means you have a totally clean starting point (a clean or rebuild-all doesn't quite clean everything away, unfortunately). I do this every 2-4 weeks to keep everything running smoothly and totally in sync with the Source Control code.
If anything modifies the datestamps of any files in your build, then this could trigger a "need" to rebuild everything. Check that your system clock is set correctly, that there aren't any datestamps of source files set to times "in the future", and there are no applications running that could possibly "touch" any of your source files.
Check this option: Tools->Options > Projects and Solutions > Build and Run : "Only build startup projects and dependencies on Run". If it is unchecked, then VS will try to rebuild all projects every time, rather than only the dependencies of the startup project. If you have a large solution with a bunch of mostly unrelated projects in it, this is a very helpful option to set.
If there are projects that you don't need to build every time, then use the Configuration Manager to disable building of those projects in your current build (or create a "Debug Fast Build" configuration so you can switch quickly between a full rebuild and a partial build). Or move projects that don't need to be built often into a separate "libraries" solution and reference/link the output files (obj or dll) form your application's Solution, so the libraries only need to be rebuilt if you edit their code.
Lastly, make sure you're doing a "Build" and not a "Rebuild" :-)
I have a couple of VS 2008 projects (C++) that are linked every time I start a build, even though nothing has changed. i.e. I select "Build Solution", it compiles and links, I select "Build Solution" again, it doesn't compile anything, but links again.
This is quite annoying and I have checked everything that might cause it to link again.
Is there a way to find out why Visual Studio does or skips certain build steps?
Any input is appreciated!
I had some time to revisit the problem and a workmate gave me the tip to use "process monitor" from sysinternals to figure out which file is missing.
Lo and behold it worked! It turns out that Visual Studio insists on linking against a bunch of libs even if the app does not need it. Due to an unfortunate (I guess...) chain of events, one of the default library paths disappeared from Visual Studios global settings, so VS couldn't find this lib anymore ("coredll.lib" in my case).
This didn't affect the final output, because this lib is not needed at all, but it still triggered a relink every time.
There are two possible fixes:
1) Restore the path to this lib in the global Visual Studio settings
2) Use "$(NoInherit)" in AdditionalLibraries to get rid of the unneeded lib.
I used solution #1, because #2 needs to be done for each configuration of each project because can't be done via Property Sheets.
Rebuilding can be caused also by non-existing and unused .h files belonging to the project. Since they are unused, there's no warning nor error about missing files.
Using "Process Monitor" by Sysinternals as mentioned earlier was a great hint towards figuring out the reason.
Bit of a long shot but check the date/time stamp on any dependent DLLs you have. If they are in the future then a rebuild will occur.
Edit: Also have you tried opening the .vcproj files up in an editor to check if anything's unusual? You could also try recreating them from scratch, if that's possible.
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.