I am trying to add these lines to the application's Build Events
xcopy debug.settings settings.settings
In order to acees the debug.settings as Default, but I am getting a exited with code 4 error when compiling. I have read code 4 would probably mean that it cannot find the specified files. But how would I reference debug.settings?
I have this file as part of my application's properties:
I got this idea from a stackoverflow question: .NET different application settings for development and release This would be a followup question based on its answer.
This is likely because xcopy cannot find the source and destination paths for the settings files. Try updating them to the fully qualified path (i.e. C:\SomeFolder\MyProject\debug.settings).
Also, check out the documentation when in doubt (or looking for what error codes mean).
As an aside, if you are simply looking for a way to change values in an app.config or web.config based on your build configuration, take a look at SlowCheetah.
Related
I have a c# ClickOnce application that I need to be able to publish multiple times for OEM purposes.
The way I understand it now is that publish settings are located in the .csproj file.
However, this is inconvenient in the case where I want to publish multiple versions.
for example, Company A needs totally different icons, start menu location, product name etc. from Company B, but the assemblies need not be renamed.
Here are a couple approaches/questions that I can think of to solve this issue...
1.Is there a way to create a separate publish settings file to use during build time?
2.Can I edit specific publish settings (like Start Menu location, etc) at build time with MSBuild.exe? I think this would be ideal...
e.g.
MSBuild.exe project.sln /target:Publish /property:edit-project-publish-settings-here
3.Maybe create a 2nd .csproj file? (Would prefer not to do this...)
Please share your thoughts as to the best approach, or any other clever ways to make this happen. Thanks!
I wish I could give you some brilliant solution, but personally I would probably go with option 3.
I mean, its pretty simple, the changes should be pretty static and it will be difficult(ish) to totally screw it up and deploy the wrong changes to the wrong company.
If you copy the .csproj in your project folder, it will reference all of the same source files and you can just change the executable name. Create another VS solution and you can reference the copied .csproj and get rid of your first one so that you can publish two separate versions.
This isn't ideal for ClickOnce however.
If you use a Singleton object that specifies the "mode" (Company A, B, C, etc.) you can easily store that in the app.config (or another xml file). Then just re-publish your ClickOnce Application but copy the correct version of your configuration file in so it gets shipped with the build. This way, you don't need any additional csprojects Just include all of your icons and set them at run-time on App Start based on your Singleton object.
I found that you are able to edit certain properties using MSBuild.exe like this
MSBuild Solution.sln /target:publish /property:ProductName=ProductA\;Publisher=CompanyA\;ApplicationIcon=companyA.ico
I found another useful post on modifying.csproj files programatically with .NET code. (This would only be needed if you're modifying things that are deeper than just the project properties specified in the ClickOnce documentation below)
The MSBuild documentation here was also useful -- especially under Publishing Properties
I'm currently using a post build event in my project to copy my assemblies to another directory for debugging purposes. This is local to my machine, and is for debugging purposes only, so I would prefer to have it in a *.csproj.user file instead of a *.csproj file. I tried copying the responsible elements from the *.csproj to the *.csproj.user, but that didn't work.
Edit
To clarify, I do not want to put user specific commands in the post-build event in the *.csproj file. Instead, I want to put the post-build event commands in the *.csproj.user file. (From the answers so far, this is looking impossible)
To give more context, it is not a project reference. I am copying my assembly to the directory of the application that loads the assemblies at runtime. (Think plugins)
The short answer is no, not the way you want to do it :|
The slightly longer answer is sorta. You can in theory have specific build events triggered for individual users, but these would still be in the csproj file. You can run external events on builds and then allow these external events to run depending on what user is running them (as a script).
If this is for debug only I'd just insert them, do your build stuff and pull them out before uploading it to your version control system.
Use an if statement and an enviroment variable (in double quotes if required)
if "$(Username)" == "MyUser"
copy /y $(ProjectDir)memcached.$(ConfigurationName).config $(ProjectDir)memcached.config
You can utilize a custom build target that has a condition triggered by an environment variable. Then only set that variable on your machine.
Pre-/Post-build events are kept in the project file. VS provides no options.
You can introduce a custom (external) tool to perform such copying though and call it from menu, or macros and call it too.
I am curious if it is possible to specify in a web.config file to have visual studio not publish certain files or a certain directory.
The use case that I am trying to solve for is that I have a Test folder on a web app, that provides a series of useful pages for testing and debugging. The pages are very useful for development and qa. However in production they should not exist. What I would like is that when I publish my code with the release config that these files, or the entire folder is not published.
It doesn't really matter where the build conditions are stored, what is important is how you're gonna use them during build/publish. A conditional msbuild script would easily solve your issue - one of build tasks would be to publish/discard files depending of the value of some internal msbuild property and the property value comes from the web.config or any other external source (build script parameter, external XML file, etc.)
You could exclude the folder from your solution, then in publish it would not push it out. Then, if you want it back in your solution, it will still be there. Just right click the folder and include it.
I don't really if this is the "right" way or even possible to do what you are asking.
What I would suggest is to create a second project for your test. I usually go that way and just deploy the second "project" in my test environement.
I have a Deployment Project for my VS2008 C# application. When installing a new version of my application I want to make sure that files are updated with the files contained in the installer.
I want my installer to automatically remove any old version of the installed application. To do that I follow this procedure (also described here):
Set RemovePreviousVersions to True
Set DetectNewerInstalledVersion to
True
Increment the Version of the
installer
Choose Yes to change the ProductCode
For the assemblies I make sure the AssemblyVersion is set to a higher version:
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")]
Everything is working as intended except for my configuration files (xml files). Since I cannot find a way to "version" these files I cannot make sure that the files are updated if they have been modified on the target machine.
Is there any way to do this and how?
UPDATE: I have tried the approach/solution/workaround found here
Include the file directly in a
project with the following
properties: "Build Action -> Content
file" and "Copy to Output Directory
-> Copy always"
Then add it to the deployment
project via Project
Output->Database->Content Files
Unfortunately it did not make any difference. The behavior is exactly the same.
Add the following property to the Property table of the MSI:
Property REINSTALLMODE with Value amus
Note: This will cause all the files in the MSI (versioned and nonversioned) to overwrite the files that are on the system.
If you're willing to use Orca (there may be another way to do this method, but it's the only one I know of) you may be able to set up RemoveFile directives.
See here for a typically light-weight MSDN document -- could be a starting point.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371201.aspx
Alternatively you could always create a very simple bootstrapper executable that simply calls "msiexec /i REINSTALLMODE=oums" (or whichever command-line switches are needed). Call it setup.exe if you like...
Better option long-term may be to switch to InstallShield or similar -- VS2010 includes a light version of IS and I believe they're moving away from vdproj projects.
Have you tried the approach/solution/workaround found here?
Include the file directly in a
project with the following
properties: "Build Action -> Content
file" and "Copy to Output Directory
-> Copy always"
Then add it to the deployment
project via Project
Output->Database->Content Files
I may be incorrect here, and therefore I am exposing myself to down votes, but here goes anyway!
I believe it is on purpose that config files do not automatically get overwritten; the principle there being that you would not normally want your application's configuration overwritten when you install the new version of the program... at least not without numerous warnings and/or chances to merge configuration first.
Having your application configuration get overwritten by an updated version of a program could make for a very upset end user (in this case, web site admin).
Further, I know that sometimes, the developer may be the person doing the deployment. In such a case, this behavior might not seem so logical when deploying a single site to a single server; but when roles are split and/or you have multiple servers with different configurations, this can be a life saver.
You need to include the new version of your files in your custom installer and manually install these file during Custom Install routine is called
This must be applied to any file that does not have version that can be tracked by the installer.
I've got a Visual Studio C# project which is under version control (SVN).
I've always commited and updated the project without any problems. But a couple of hours ago Visual Studio throws the following error when I try to launch/rebuild the project:
Files has invalid value "<<<<<<<
.mine". Illegal characters in path.
I don't know how to fix this problem. What should I do?
That happens when svn encounters a conflict: You changed a file, the file on the server was changed and it cannot (easily) be merged automatically. You need to decide what is the correct solution now.
Subversion just adds the diff into your source file (and creates files next to it, called OriginalName.mine (unchanged) and OriginalName.rsomething (unchanged, server version)).
Fix the conflict and tell subversion that this is resolved.
just delete the obj folder and it will worked fine.
Remove the code that shouldn't be in the file throwing the error and remove the the three files with extensions .mine, .<somerevision> and .<some_other_revision>. svn updated files that now contain 'conflicts' and you need to resolve these conflicts by hand. Usually this means you edited a file, someone else edited the same file and checked in changes and you didn't pay attention when checking out the changed file.
Delete every thing you have in obj folder .
Remove your obj folder from svn version control . Because on every build it get updated and when other developer commit changes to solution SVN is unable to marge obj folder files and raise error
Files has invalid value "<<<<<<< .mine". Illegal characters in path.
Please read the Basic Usage chapter in the subversion book. It has a section about Merging conflicts by hand which explains the conflict markers you're seeing.
Removing the debug folders worked for me (see comment-not answer above).
I got this after moving 12 folders from one section of svn to a new section. So if you get this after moving a project and the error does not point to an actual file, this is likely your issue.
If you have AnkhSVN or VisualSVN installed resolving this is most likely as easy as right clicking the file in the solution explorer and selecting edit conflict.
This will open the changed file in your merge editor. (See Tools->Options->Source Control->Subversion User tools for AnkhSVN). With a good merge tool like the free to use SourceGear DiffMerge or TortoiseMerge, resolving the conflict is just a few mouseclicks away.
I have had this happen on a large scale where the files get marked resolved but the conflict metadata is still there. I wrote a regular expression for visual studio to find these, for instances where it is not feasible to simply revert the changed files.
http://www.codetunnel.com/blog/post/90/ever-merge-with-svn-and-mess-up-when-resolving-conflicts-read-on
I closed the IDE, then deleted the obj folder and restarted the IDE and rebuilt my Code. This worked for me.
Inside your project :
odj folder -> Debug -> project name.csproj.Filelistabsolute.txt(snb.csproj.Filelistabsolute.txt)
Inside the text file
>>>>>>>.mine and >>>>>>>.r150 occurs
to remove the things the program works
1)Just save your local changes whatever u have edited in the file
2)revert the file
3)update it from SVN
4)Paste your local changes
If you are using TortoiseSVN you should have a right click option on the file called Edit Conflicts. This should bring up TortoiseMerge which is able to read those obnoxious notations stuck into the file (really, to break your code so you KNOW there's an issue and don't blindly check it in).
TortoiseMerge will read it properly and present you with a 3-way merge. This was what I was looking for. Although it is true that it does also create the separate .mine and .rxxx and .ryyy files, and there are various manual and command-line ways to deal with all this.
Have a simple solution. just delete all file from debug folder and rebuild the solution, an error display on the screen "There were build errors. Would you like to continue and run the last successful build? click on "Yes" button. Now stop the program and run normally.