Since I set up my new work machine I have been working on existing projects. However, today I wanted to start work on a little utility application and so fired up Visual Studio. On clicking new project I found I had no templates installed by default.
After some digging on the interweb I found the answer is to close Visual Studio and then navigate to your Visual Studio install directory (c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\) and then locate the devenv.exe. For me the full path was c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE.
Once there in a Visual Studio Command Prompt you need to run the following :
devenv /installvstemplates
It will take a couple of minutes to finish but once done you can fire up Visual Studio and all the default templates will be available.
Showing posts with label Visual Studio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visual Studio. Show all posts
22 February 2012
Column Editing Mode For Visual Studio & (G)Vim.
I have been a heavy Visual Studio user for 10 + years. I was re-factoring some code today when I found that it has Column Editing capabilities. This was caused by me getting a keyboard short cut wrong and not noticing as I typed. From a quick Google this appears to be something that has been available for sometime. Usually when I need to do Column Editing in bulk I switch to (G)Vim and have often wished it was available in Visual Studio.
To edit columns in Visual Studio you simple have to hold SHIFT+ALT after selecting the start point with your mouse and then drag to select the columns you wish to edit. Start typing and your columns will all receive the edit.
As a side note Column Editing in (G)Vim is very easy. Simply hit CTRL+V to put you into column editing mode and then select the columns to edit. Once selected hit SHIFT+i to put you into insert mode and start making your edits. Once done hit ESC to exit column editing mode.
To edit columns in Visual Studio you simple have to hold SHIFT+ALT after selecting the start point with your mouse and then drag to select the columns you wish to edit. Start typing and your columns will all receive the edit.
As a side note Column Editing in (G)Vim is very easy. Simply hit CTRL+V to put you into column editing mode and then select the columns to edit. Once selected hit SHIFT+i to put you into insert mode and start making your edits. Once done hit ESC to exit column editing mode.
3 August 2011
Disable Visual Studio 2010 w3wp Warning
So I have finally got to switch to my new laptop (windows 7, i5 lots of RAM!) and reinstalled all my tools.
This first thing that started to really annoy me was that every time I attempted to attach to the w3wp.exe process to debug Visual Studio showed a message telling me it might be a bit dangerous to do so. Clicking OK allows you to attach and debug as usual. I had to find a way to disable that message.
Apparently you can and I have! Thanks to a great little post over at thethoughtfulcoder.com it appears this can be turned off in the registry.
This is great and saved me some keystrokes however, it is the kind of thing you should be able to disable in Visual Studio itself rather than have to dig about in the registry for.
This first thing that started to really annoy me was that every time I attempted to attach to the w3wp.exe process to debug Visual Studio showed a message telling me it might be a bit dangerous to do so. Clicking OK allows you to attach and debug as usual. I had to find a way to disable that message.
Apparently you can and I have! Thanks to a great little post over at thethoughtfulcoder.com it appears this can be turned off in the registry.
This is great and saved me some keystrokes however, it is the kind of thing you should be able to disable in Visual Studio itself rather than have to dig about in the registry for.
7 May 2010
Visual Studio Styles
I have just come across this site, studiostyles.info which not only house's loads of Visual Studio styles but it also has a style builder available for you to create your own.
When I get some time I will have a play but I am very happy with my own style at the moment
When I get some time I will have a play but I am very happy with my own style at the moment
7 April 2010
Visual Studio Fun & Games
Further to my previous post I have found the following issues.
So much pain for something so simple.
- Settings - Once you have got your Visual Studio instal back to how you want it with SP1 you will have lost all of your settings. I recommend you Export them prior to altering your install
- Add-ins - You will probably find most of your add-ins do not work as expected. I found it easiest to uninstall all of them and re-install them.
So much pain for something so simple.
Updating An Existing Visual Studio Installation.
When I installed my current install of Visual Studio 2008 I only installed C# and VC++ as I never have a need for VB.Net and we (as in the company never use it).
That is until one of our developer's created a new tool which had a reliance on it. No problem... in goes the Visual Studio 2008 disk and we'll add it. Only it isn't that simple. Although Visual Studio run itself in to maintenance mode it would not allow VB.Net to install. It came up with the following error :
A selected drive is no longer valid. Please review your installation path settings before continuing with setup.
After a little googling I found that you need to install Visual Studio SP1 before amending your installation. So you need to uninstal SP 1, add or remove the required components and then reinstall SP 1.
Seems a little like too much hard work for a software amendment to me.
That is until one of our developer's created a new tool which had a reliance on it. No problem... in goes the Visual Studio 2008 disk and we'll add it. Only it isn't that simple. Although Visual Studio run itself in to maintenance mode it would not allow VB.Net to install. It came up with the following error :
A selected drive is no longer valid. Please review your installation path settings before continuing with setup.
After a little googling I found that you need to install Visual Studio SP1 before amending your installation. So you need to uninstal SP 1, add or remove the required components and then reinstall SP 1.
Seems a little like too much hard work for a software amendment to me.
1 April 2010
Visual Studio 2008 Free Spell Checker
Ever since I have moved into developing web applications I have always tried to have a spell checker installed to check page text and comments/strings etc.
ComponentOne used to provide a nice free version which did the trick but since I had to rebuild kermit (my main work laptop) I found that they have started charging for it. So I started to have a quick look for a good free spell checker and I have settled on
ASP.NET/HTML Spell Checker for VS 2008.
It works based on Word dictionary integration and allows for custom words and exceptions and so does everything I need. Further details on where to grab it and how it works can be found here.
ComponentOne used to provide a nice free version which did the trick but since I had to rebuild kermit (my main work laptop) I found that they have started charging for it. So I started to have a quick look for a good free spell checker and I have settled on
ASP.NET/HTML Spell Checker for VS 2008.
It works based on Word dictionary integration and allows for custom words and exceptions and so does everything I need. Further details on where to grab it and how it works can be found here.
1 September 2009
Howto open a Visual Studio file from an application into a running Visual Studio instance.
I have a little utility application that I have been working on for some time which is used to edit our applications .config files (note these are essentially the <appSettings> section from our web.config wrapped into client specific files). For a while I was struggling to solve what I thought was a simple issue. That was that I wanted to set the application as the default tool to open the .config files with within Visual Studio (right click on a file and Open With, this will let you set a tool to open the file with and even set it as the default).
The problem started when I next went to open the default web.config and it obviously tried to load it via my application (which does not handle the default web.config).
I amended the Main() method of my application to check for the file name (crude but it works) and only continue loading the file passed via the command line arguments if it matched a set patten. That worked..... kind of!!
The trouble was when ever the application came across a file it did not want to handle it would, as designed, open the file in Visual Studio. However, rather than in the running instance of Visual Studio it always opened a new instance of the application.
After much digging about and Spy'ing I discovered that you have to pass the /EDIT parameter to DEVENV to have the file open in a running instance. So DEVENV /EDIT $FileName is the pattern.
The problem started when I next went to open the default web.config and it obviously tried to load it via my application (which does not handle the default web.config).
I amended the Main() method of my application to check for the file name (crude but it works) and only continue loading the file passed via the command line arguments if it matched a set patten. That worked..... kind of!!
The trouble was when ever the application came across a file it did not want to handle it would, as designed, open the file in Visual Studio. However, rather than in the running instance of Visual Studio it always opened a new instance of the application.
After much digging about and Spy'ing I discovered that you have to pass the /EDIT parameter to DEVENV to have the file open in a running instance. So DEVENV /EDIT $FileName is the pattern.
27 February 2009
Debugging NUnit Test
Mental note as I always have to look this up :
1./ Add required break points.
2./ Launch NUnit
3./ Within Visual Studio Debug --> Attach To Process
4./ Ensure Managed Code is selected.
5./ Run your tests from NUnit.
1./ Add required break points.
2./ Launch NUnit
3./ Within Visual Studio Debug --> Attach To Process
4./ Ensure Managed Code is selected.
5./ Run your tests from NUnit.
3 February 2009
A Newbies Impression Of Visual Studio
Catherine wants to learn C# but already she is finding Visual Studio a bloated, complicated option. An impression that I share with her.
I have now used Visual Studio for about 7 years in all it's forms. The one thing I notice? Each version adds a ton of features of which a handful are useful and most are never used. Each version slows down even though the hardware I now run it on is more powerful. Each version adds more "mouse only" functions and newbie friendly "wizards".
To do anything useful I tend to install the addin's I need and set the colour scheme to a dark version. However, that is another thing. The addin's slow Visual Studio down. On the recommendation of Yoda (our esteemed technical guru) I installed the PowerCommands addin and now when I right mouse click on the project file it takes about 3 seconds for the menu to appear.
The thing is that Microsoft are capable of some great stuff.......but as is more the case Visual Studio is now not one of those items. Perhaps if you have no experience of alternative IDE's, editors etc then you might be happy to use Visual Studio and I would imagine there are hundereds of developers that do love it. I just wish I could be one of them!
Come on Microsoft, lets look at the 3 areas that Visual Studio needs improving and do something about it. Sort the number of files and amount of memory that Visual Stuido needs to run, sort the addin architecture so addins do not have the performance of a retarded snail and remove the bloated features that most people do not use and turn them into add ins.
Or make everyone really happy and create a bare-bones Visual Studio IDE and create everything as a addin. That way most people would get what they want, an IDE that works how they want.
Oh and lastly......any chance of vi key bindings ;)
I have now used Visual Studio for about 7 years in all it's forms. The one thing I notice? Each version adds a ton of features of which a handful are useful and most are never used. Each version slows down even though the hardware I now run it on is more powerful. Each version adds more "mouse only" functions and newbie friendly "wizards".
To do anything useful I tend to install the addin's I need and set the colour scheme to a dark version. However, that is another thing. The addin's slow Visual Studio down. On the recommendation of Yoda (our esteemed technical guru) I installed the PowerCommands addin and now when I right mouse click on the project file it takes about 3 seconds for the menu to appear.
The thing is that Microsoft are capable of some great stuff.......but as is more the case Visual Studio is now not one of those items. Perhaps if you have no experience of alternative IDE's, editors etc then you might be happy to use Visual Studio and I would imagine there are hundereds of developers that do love it. I just wish I could be one of them!
Come on Microsoft, lets look at the 3 areas that Visual Studio needs improving and do something about it. Sort the number of files and amount of memory that Visual Stuido needs to run, sort the addin architecture so addins do not have the performance of a retarded snail and remove the bloated features that most people do not use and turn them into add ins.
Or make everyone really happy and create a bare-bones Visual Studio IDE and create everything as a addin. That way most people would get what they want, an IDE that works how they want.
Oh and lastly......any chance of vi key bindings ;)
21 January 2009
The Sandcastle Project.
Sandcastle is a project that started life on Codeplex. It's a Microsoft application for generating MSDN documentation from XML comments.
It is Rubbish!
That's not a statement I make blindly but after trying to get it to work (on and off for about a year). All the application does (at a high level) is take the xml documentation output file generated by Visual Studio during a build and create MSDN style documentation (both web based and compiled help file).
This should just be a case of applying a xslt file and job done.
Oh no.... not Sandcastle. Sandcastle takes around 20 minutes to generate the help file for a small utility application. Last time I attemptted to to build documentation for our main application on a build machine that we use (i.e. nothing and no-one else on it used solely for building software) it crashed to to maxing out the Ram (1gb).
There is an interesting article about the current state of the project here. To sum up the article ... the application is not worthy of using in a serious build environment.
If anyone has got it working I would be interested to find out more.
It is Rubbish!
That's not a statement I make blindly but after trying to get it to work (on and off for about a year). All the application does (at a high level) is take the xml documentation output file generated by Visual Studio during a build and create MSDN style documentation (both web based and compiled help file).
This should just be a case of applying a xslt file and job done.
Oh no.... not Sandcastle. Sandcastle takes around 20 minutes to generate the help file for a small utility application. Last time I attemptted to to build documentation for our main application on a build machine that we use (i.e. nothing and no-one else on it used solely for building software) it crashed to to maxing out the Ram (1gb).
There is an interesting article about the current state of the project here. To sum up the article ... the application is not worthy of using in a serious build environment.
If anyone has got it working I would be interested to find out more.
10 December 2008
Rules of branching......
Just found that someone with whom I work has changed the name of a visual studio solution file in one of our branches. The reason was that people where finding it difficult to know which branch they where working on.
I don't agree with this as it goes against what I understand to be branching. I would be interested to find out what other people think on the issue.
I don't agree with this as it goes against what I understand to be branching. I would be interested to find out what other people think on the issue.
1 December 2008
Visual Studio Toolbox Choose Items Crash
Here is a link to a know problem which I am now experiencing.
Basically if you try to add items to your Visual Studio 2008 toolbox and have the Power Commands Addin installed and SP1 Visual Studio will crash.
There is a link at the bottom of the post above with a work around.
Basically if you try to add items to your Visual Studio 2008 toolbox and have the Power Commands Addin installed and SP1 Visual Studio will crash.
There is a link at the bottom of the post above with a work around.
18 November 2008
Visual Studio 2008.
Why does it need 205,184k just to open my solution? And why does it need to trash my hard drive?
9 October 2008
Gimp 2.6 And Visual Studio 2008.
Having downloaded and started playing with GIMP 2.6 on windows as part of the day job I have noticed a few new tricks.
The best of which is that you can now set GIMP to be your default graphic file handler in Visual Studio 2008. (I have tried this with previous versions of both GIMP and Visual Studio and it has never worked as expected. There may have been fixes or workarounds but life is too short!)
Simply right mouse click on a graphic file, select open with. In the dialog box that appears select Add and you will be able to set the path to the gimp-2.6.exe file and set a name that will be displayed in the available applications list that VS displays when you select open with. Once you have entered these click OK and click Set As Default. Now every time you open a graphics file it will load up into Gimp.
The best of which is that you can now set GIMP to be your default graphic file handler in Visual Studio 2008. (I have tried this with previous versions of both GIMP and Visual Studio and it has never worked as expected. There may have been fixes or workarounds but life is too short!)
Simply right mouse click on a graphic file, select open with. In the dialog box that appears select Add and you will be able to set the path to the gimp-2.6.exe file and set a name that will be displayed in the available applications list that VS displays when you select open with. Once you have entered these click OK and click Set As Default. Now every time you open a graphics file it will load up into Gimp.
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