I am having problems getting my C# Solution to build "Fresh". If I clean the solution and build it again it will not build (I can do it a few times and it will build). It has an error about the azure project getting build before the worker and web projects that it is dependent on. Also about how most of the projects in the solution are looking for
WAT070 : The referenced assembly {...}/Worker.dll was not found.
Please make sure to build the role project that produces this assembly before building this Windows Azure Cloud Service Project.
{...}\VisualStudio\v12.0\Windows Azure Tools\2.2\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.targets 1252 5 AzureProjectName
Now if I build the projects in the order listed in the Project Dependencies -> Build Order everything works. Also, the web and work role are listed before Azure Project.
Solution is very simple.
You can set your project build order by right click on 'Project Solution' and select "Select Project Build Order" option.
For Example, I have a WpfFormApplicaiton1 and two class with title "ClassLibrary1" and "ClassLibrary2". By default Visual Studio sets it as follow:
My requirement is such as "ClassLibrary2" will be used by "ClassLibrary1" & "ClassLibrary1" will be used by "WpfFormApplication1". So, in order to fulfill this requirement I have to change the default project build order.
Go to Project Dependencies; Select the "ClassLibrary1" and set the "ClassLibrary2" as its dependency.
Similary, select the "WpfFormApplication1" and set the "ClassLibrary1" as its dependency.
Now, the desired project build order is set; confirmed by Project Build Order's options.
Solution is taken from my blog.
Your issue may be that the Dependencies are not defined. Even though the Build Order shows the order in which projects are built, if you do not define the dependencies for each one under Project Dependencies, msbuild will not know to wait for the dependencies build to complete before moving on.
To clarify: Unless you actually check the box that an item is a dependency, the projects in the build order list may build in parallel and not sequentially.
You can see under Tools->Options->Project and Solutions->Build and Runthat there is a default value for the number of parallel projects to build.
So to make the build process wait for dependencies to build make sure that all of the "Depends on" fields are checked for the projects needed under Project Dependencies -> Dependencies.
We had an issue where the project guids differed in case. Editing the project files solved the issue. We changed all Guids to uppercase
I just had this issue too. In my case the issue was that I had several project references within the solution. The other projects were using a different version of the framework to my Worker Role (4.5.1 vs 4.5).
When I changed all projects to use the same version of the framework the solution builds and runs successfully.
I had this issue. In my case, the solution's project build order, as determined by VS.Net, was not correct. Specifically, my web project was listed above three of its dependencies.
These three dependencies were listed under in the References node of the web project in the Solution Explorer. However, in the dialogue Project Dependencies, the web project did not depend on any project.
Also, I noticed that the web project had a small blue exclamation mark, with hoover-over message "The Web project '' requires SQL Server Express, which is not installed on this computer. ...". After fiddling with the web.config, based on ASP.NET Web Api: Project requires SQL Server Express and reloading the project, the exclamation disappeared and the project dependencies were correctly checked in the dialogue Project Dependencies and the build order reflected this correctly. However, when I reverted the changes to the web.config, as a test, the dependencies were not removed, so I am quite unsure what fixed my issues.
Anyway, in the dialogue Project Dependencies, you can manually check any project which was not automatically identified as a dependency.
Check to make sure there aren't any residual old files in your working folder. These can cause confusions with MSBuild. To avoid that, simply blow away all the old files in the path and get latest.
Related
Recently we had this case:
We have multiple projects in our solution that depend on each other. With project dependencies we make sure the project is build in the right order.
In the case above a developer forgot to add a project dependency. Therefore 2 things could happen:
1. The build would fail because msbuild builds and outputs the projects in an order that does not work
2. The build would succeed because msbuild builds and outputs the projects in the right order (by accident)
As you can see above, the first nightly build succeeded, the second nightly did not, and the third succeeded again. This can be confusing. I would like to make the builds more repeatable, so that the consecutive builds either all fail or all succeed.
Is there an approach i can take to make this better?
I read about deterministic builds but i am unsure whether that would help my case:
https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/blob/master/docs/compilers/Deterministic%20Inputs.md
Additional info;
- The code is checkout clean before each build
- We use a plugin-based model so projects are not stitched together with project references, but plugin projects are build separately without dependencies. Then we reference the output dll from our application projects. Therefore the plugin should be built before the application project. We manually add project dependencies to make sure this happens.
I have 2 solutions that contain test related code. One is for UI automation and another for API. I combined both solutions and I am able to build and run tests from both but:
Each one of those contains similar configs that I would like to combine under one project. No need to have the same thing in both obviously. I removed configs from project2 and created references from Proj1 to Proj2. I build Project1 and artifacts are generated fine from Project1, but it does not contain all artifacts from Proj2.
Previously, when I build projects separately, It would generate say 60 files in the build folder, but now its much less.
Question:
If I decide to add project #3 and add configs to it. How can I build project 3 and combine artifacts from all of them in bin folder of project #3.
I hope I'm making this clear.
Essentially I want to be able to build 1 project which will trigger builds for remaining 2 and pull all artifacts to together.
As Ziggler suggests, you can change the build output folder to combine all artifacts from all of them in bin folder of project #3.
And you can do this by passing $(OutputPath) property in command-line. It seems that you're using something like TeamCity, Azure Devops or what in your environment.
For these tools, we can add msbuild parameter like: /p:OutputPath="Path to project3's bin folder" if you're using msbuild to build whole solution(msbuild xx.sln). See Global Property.
And about the build order, you can add project dependency to control the build order. Msbuild will recognize project dependency and project reference and then choose the right order automatically. Hope it helps :)
I have been publishing my web site using Azure-TFS continuous delivery for quite a while already, and it has been working great until now.
I broke it by adding a new Project (WPF) to my solution, in fact the build process try to compile the WPF application and end up with an error because it doesn't know one of the xmlns I use in my view (one of the dependency).
My asp project doesn't have any references to the WPF application (direct or indirect), yet TFS try to build it.
Is there a way to explicitly exclude files or projects from a TFS build definition ?
Thanks for your responses,
Adrien.
If you are building few projects by specifying a solution file in build definition and want to exclude a specific project in build?
In this scenario, you need to update them in solution file configuration properties itself.
This has probably been posted before, but I'm not sure what search terms to look for!
Quick explanation.
I have code that is shared between a few projects. This code is still work-in-progress itself. The issue is that whenever I need to update this code for whatever, I don't want to have to do it 3 times, this will become a nightmare.
Is there a way to add it to a project, without copying it into the project folder?
i.e. I want the shared class to be linked into my 3 projects as
C:\code repository\sharedclass.cs NOT \eachproject\bin\sharedclass.cs
Do I have to create it as it's own library project? It would be much better if the compiler could compile it as 'external' code.
Cheers.
As others have said, you can simply right-click on your solution in the solution explorer, select Add > Existing Project, and browse to the common project's .csproj file, and it will be included in the solution from its original location.
There are two problems with this however, which may or may not be an issue, depending on the size of your team:
The common project will be included in each solution with a relative path to the solution file (i.e.: ...\CommonProject\Common.csproj). This means all developers have to have the same working file structure or they will get errors when they try to open the main project.
In the scenario that the common project is referenced by multiple projects (say two - A and B) and a developer working on project A has to make changes to the common project as part of their task, there is no way for that developer to know if the changes they have made will break project B without them actually checking out project B and compiling it. As more and more projects reference the common project, the risk of this happening increases to the point where it becomes unmanageable.
Again, as others have said, there is no 'correct' way to do this. However, the approach I have taken is as follows:
Use continuous integration such as Cruise Control to manage the building of the projects and put the common project as a standalone project on the server.
Create a directory under your source control to house built common DLLs. Have this directory checked out on your build machine and whenever the common project builds, it copies the output DLL into the DLL folder and commits these changes to source control.
Use environment variables on all developers' machines and the build server to control the location of the common DLL folder and reference the DLLs using that variable rather than the hard-coded path. (i.e.: rather than C:\Source\MyCommonProjectDLLS\Common.dll, use $(MyCommonLocation)\Common.dll with the variable 'MyCommonLocation' set to C:\Source\MyCommonProjectDLLS)
For any project which references the common DLL, set up a CI trigger on the build server for that project to watch the common DLL folder. Whenever changes are committed to it, the build server should then build all consuming projects.
This immediately lets you know if you are committing breaking changes for any other project. The only drawback is that, in this model, consuming projects are forced to take updates to the common DLL as soon as they are made. An alternative is to version the Common DLL from the source control revision when it is built, and place each version in its own sub directory under the common DLL folder. So you would end up with:
Common DLLs
-1.0.0.1234
-1.0.0.1235
-1.0.0.1236
And so on. The advantage of this is that each project can then choose when to take updates to the common DLL by simply referencing the new version of the code. However, it cuts both ways as this can mean that some projects are left with older versions of the common code for longer than they should, which can increase the work involved when the time comes to finally bring in those changes.
Yes.
You can add a project from anywhere on your hard drive to a solution. So put the shared code into a class library and add that to your three projects.
Microsoft has been supporting an open source project which comes built into VS now, its called NuGet, you can output your shared project as a nuget file and consume it in your other projects.
It will actually deploy all the files you specify in the package upon build.
This is how .Net supports dependencies now. You will notice that even things like EF come through NuGet packages. You can even host it for free on places like MyGet.org I use this and it works quite well.
http://nuget.org/
I use git submodules to achieve this.
Create a new git repository for each module (project) that you want to share between solutions. I usually also include unit tests for that project in a separate project but in the same git repository.
Add a submodule to the git repository of the solution that will use the shared code. Adding a submodule creates a link to a specific commit of an external repository. When the code in the submodule is updated you will be able to pull the updates to your parent solution, which is essentially the same as updating the reference to the submodule commit. I find that the process is easier to visualise using an app like SourceTree.
Adding the submodule and pulling the latest commit will create a copy of the shared project inside the parent solution folder. Import the project into the parent Visual Studio solution by right-clicking on the solution and selecting "Add existing project".
Add a reference to the shared project in the other projects that will be using it by right-clicking on the project and selecting "Add Reference" and finding the shared project in the "Solution" tab.
Now that the shared project is included in the solution you will be able to push and pull changes to the submodule and these changes will automatically be incorporated into the solution. You will also be able to see the changes in other git repositories that reference the submodule.
Yes, put the code which need to be shared in a separate class library project, build it and reference the DLL created from this build into your other projects.
It is better to extract common part into a separate project library and add reference of this project to all the solutions/dependent projects.
Otherwise you can Add code/file/item as Link.
Summary
I'm having a very strange behavior with Visual Studio 2010, and I'm not sure if it is a bug or if there is some twisted logic to why it is behaving in this way.
The executive summary is that when I use Batch Build->Select All->Rebuild to build all the configurations for all my projects, VS2010 produces differing output binaries depending on what is the currently selected Solution Configuration. This is really annoying because some of the project outputs fail to run correctly (giving a "[Project name] has stopped working" error dialog on startup) depending on which Solution configuration was selected during the batch build.
More details
I have a Solution with 3 C# projects in it (1 .dll outputting project, referenced by the other 2 .exe outputting projects). Of the .exe outputting projects, Project A has Release and Debug Project configurations. Project B has a Debug, Release-x86, and Release-x64 configuration because it needs some different post-build scripts run to give it the correct version 3rd party libraries.
I have 4 Solution Configurations: Debug, Release, Release-x86, and Release-x64. Release-x86 and -x64 are set to build only Project B. Release and Debug build Project A and the shared dll project.
If I select the Debug Solution configuration from the current configuration drop-down box, and the Batch Build all, then when I try to run the Release configuration of Project A it fails to run. If I select any other Solution configuration from the drop down, and then Batch Build all, then it runs successfully. When I diff the produced .exe file, I can see that it is different between these two cases.
Question
Is this some known intended behavior of VS2010? If so, can someone give a hint as to why this problem may be occurring and how I can fix it? Is this a bug in VS2010?
Follow-Up Clue? [Edit]
Could this have something to do with how VS2010 handles "Project references"? As I mentioned, both .exe projects reference the dll Project, call it Project D. I added that reference (to Project A, say) by selecting Add Reference -> Project -> Project D. But of course the different configurations of Project A want to use different configurations versions of Project D. When I examine the Project A -> Project D reference under Properties, I see a Path field that is not editable. Depending on which Solution configuration is selected, I either see ...\Project D\bin\Release\Project D.dll or ``...\Project D\bin\Debug\Project D.dll, and I don't see any way to control this so I guess VS2010 is trying to be smart about picking the details of Project configurations. But even more strangely, if I select Batch Build -> Select All -> Clean to remove all compiled files, than these reference paths change to ...\obj\... instead of ...\bin\... when I inspect them, and I can't seem to change them back except by removing and re-adding the project reference.
Follow-Up 2 [Edit2]
I lied a little bit earlier, I actually have 2 .dll projects (Projects D and E, say) where D references E through a project reference.
I'm pretty sure something broken or bizarre with Project References in VS2010 is the culprit, and think I have found the root cause of the selected-Solution-Configuration-dependent behavior, with the following steps
1) I Batch Build -> Select All -> Clean, to remove all previously compiled binaries.
2) I select a Debug Solution Configuration from the drop-down.
3) I Batch Build -> Select Only Project A Release -> Rebuild.
By watching the Output window, I see that VS2010 knows that Project A depends on D, and D depends on E, so it attempts to build them in reverse order. It successfully builds the Release configuration of project E. But then it tries and fails to build the Release configuration of project D, because it complains about missing the missing Debug version of E dll file. And likewise A fails to build because of the absence of the Debug version of D.
So it seems that the selection Solution Configuration is overriding the configuration of referenced projects in Project to Project references.
Is that supposed to be the case???
After some further searching, I've found that this is a known bug in VS2010, marked as "Wont Fix" by Microsoft. Batch Build in VS2010 is simply broken. If you think that's as dumb as I do, go ahead and express yourself to them.
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/556158/batch-build-links-to-wrong-referenced-projects