Is a class file like MyClass.cs.bak used at run-time even though there is a class file by the name of MyClass.cs within the same Visual Studio project?
Both files are included in the project. The project is of Web Application type, so everything compiles into a single dll when deploying. I am not sure if during compilation, the .bak file is ignored.
I am working on a project in Visual Studio, in which some past developer has included both these files within the project.
If you click on the file in Solution Explorer and look at the Properties window, you'll see a property called "Build Action". This defines whether the file will be treated like code ("Compile"), included as a resource ("Embedded Resource"), or ignored ("None").
When a file is added to a project, the default Build Action is selected based on the file extension. For .bak files, which have no particular meaning to C# projects, the default "None" should be selected, and the file will be ignored when compiling the project.
No.
The .bak file is treated as a normal text file.
This is quite easy to test. Create a new class file, with a class name foo.
Now create a new .cs.bak file and type in the same code.
when you compile the project, you would expect a duplicate class declaration error - this does not occur.
As far as I know (and check), by default, a *.bak file is not considered as a C# class file in a VS Project. It's just another text file which doesn't complied into the assembly as a class module - Therefore, by the way, why you don't get duplicate class names declaration exception.
You can always tell to VS to treat it as a compilable c# file: Properties -> Build Action -> Compile.
It's just look like a backup (bak) source file - just for history purposes, I assume.
Related
Following on from my issues with a simple Visual Studio Installer Package, I'm making the switch to WiX. The learning curve is annoying, because once I've set this up I'm going to forget how it works before I need to do it again next project. But anyway, here we go.
My environment is Visual Studio 2019 and Azure DevOps (the full TFVC). The projects involved are class libraries and a WPF application all written in C#. I also have the WiXWax extension thingy to give me a GUI for adding projects and dependencies quickly.
When I created my WiX project I stupidly included a typo in the name of the project and consequently in the underlying folders. When I noticed this I decided to fix it;
Unload the projects
Using the source control explorer, rename the folder
Using notepad, open the sln file and correcting the path to the project, and the project name
Using notepad, open the project file and correct its references to the path and project name
Rename the project files
As you can see I have changed every reference to the the incorrect spelling.
Unfortunately, Visual Studio won't load the project. I get an error telling me this:
C:(correctly spelled path that matches the file system and file names).wixproj
: error : The project file
'C:(path with a typo in it)(correctly spelled project name).wixproj'
has been moved, renamed or is not on your computer.
Now the message is partly correct, because the file it says has been moved or renamed has in fact been renamed. If I click on the error it opens the wixproj file (it's just an xml of course). This file doesn't have a self referenced location though, the only things that's close is the include to the projects which haven't changed and are correct (..<correct detals>.csproj)
I have opened every xml file including the solution files and wix project files and none of them contain the typo (Ctrl+F, case insensitive, not whole word - no results).
I have tried "Removing" the WiX project from the solution and re-adding it, but I get the same error and it doesn't add it to the solution file.
What is remembering the old path name, and how can I make it forget it?
edit: I've also tried Ctrl+Shift+F per Klaus' suggestion and it finds no references.
So, despite a lot of info out there being difficult to understand and find on the latest Visual Studio settings file, I got that figured out. On your executable project, right-click and select properties, then left-click on the settings tab on the left, create a settings file (if needed), and fill in some settings names, types, and values in the table. If you want these to be permanent defaults that are embedded in the executable and read-only, set the scope to "application", but if you leave it at the default scope of "user", then you can save new values to a special user.config file in the system AppData folder which will be read from every time your app is launched, overriding the embedded defaults. This basically allows every user to have a config file automatically stored by the system saving some config settings, such as last window location, etc.
After setting up this, you can directly access the settings as follows:
var variable1 = Properties.Settings.Default.Variable1;
var variable2 = Properties.Settings.Default.Variable2;
and so forth. To set the properties to a new value is equally easy:
Properties.Settings.Default.Variable1 = variable1;
Properties.Settings.Default.Variable2 = variable2;
And then, if you want to save the special user file with the current values into something like C:\users\username\AppData\Local\ApplicationName.exe.xxxx\user.config, then just use:
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
Here is the issue - I'd like to access those same settings from all files in my solution, but the auto-generated methods are marked internal, so they can only be accessed from my main exe project. I can create a class to essentially export the settings, but this only seems to work if the startup executable is always the same. When I run unit tests (with xunit 2.0), I find that the settings are not set - if I use the library to set them and save, they show up in a Microsoft folder in AppData, that appears to correspond with Visual Studio.
Does anyone know a way I can reliably access the Properties.Settings.Default values of a project across an entire solution, or am I stuck going with a straight file at a known location and all the I/O and parsing that entails?
If so, is there a standard C# config file library that is used for this task outside of the built-in Visual Studio settings system?
Edit - Update:
The settings file appears to be based on the following:
The Company Name in the Assembly Information (Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs or Project Properties/Application/Assembly Information/Company)
If the Company is empty, it appears to use the Default namespace from (/Application/Default namespace), which matches the namespace used in Properties/Settings.settings/Settings.Designer.cs
The Executable Name (i.e. app.exe)
This is strictly the executable name at runtime, including extension, so if you rename the file, that will change the settings file name and location in AppData
The Assembly version
The folder within AppData/Local will be #1 above and then a nested folder will have the executable name (#2 above) with some other characters appended, and then a final nested folder will be the version (#3 above), and the file inside that will be user.config.
So, what appears to be happening is that when the unit test runner executes, the company of the runner is used for #1 (the built-in VS runners will use "Microsoft", and the Resharper runner will use "JetBrains", etc.), the exe name will still start off with the Namespace of the tests, and then the version number is also from the test runner (I think).
This means when running unit tests it will always look for and save to a different settings file than the main executable - so when you access the Properties.Settings.Default parameters from any assembly, it will look for the file in a different location (and save it to a different place) when running unit tests than from running the main executable.
You can always expose objects marked as internal by adding the following to the AssemblyInfo.cs [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("UnitTestProject1")] in the main exe project. You should then have access to the internal objects from the test project.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.compilerservices.internalsvisibletoattribute(v=vs.110).aspx
I have a created a C# console application that does something. Lets say its name is SampleTest. I use a config file named App.config in it. When I build this project, it creates files like SampleTest.exe, SampleTest.exe.config, etc. This is all fine.
My friend wants to execute this executable. So rather than sending SampleTest.exe and SampleTest.exe.config, I renamed the two files to DocumentManager.exe and DocumentManager.exe.config and gave it to him.
We noticed that this way, the DocumentManager.exe is not able to use the DocumentManager.exe.config file.
Please let us know what do I need to do in Visual Studio to this SampleTest project for it to generate DocumentManager.exe and DocumentManager.exe.config?
I tried renaming the SampleTest project to DocumentManager and building it but it still generates SampleTest.exe
Renaming the Assembly
Renaming the project on it's own is likely not going to be enough for what you are trying to accomplish. You'll need to ensure that you update the name of your assembly and namespace as well, which can be done through Properties > Application > Assembly name :
Changing the assembly name will change the names of your executable and .config files generated when building the project. It's probably worth changing your default namespace as well, just to keep things consistent.
You have to rename assembly. To fix this please do the following:
Navigate to project folder and find SampleTest.csproj file.
Open that file in some text editor like Notepad++. Find elements:
<RootNamespace>SampleTest</RootNamespace>
<AssemblyName>SampleTest</AssemblyName>
Rename their values into:
<RootNamespace>DocumentManager</RootNamespace>
<AssemblyName>DocumentManager</AssemblyName>`.
4. Build your project and you will see new DocumentManager.exe.config and new DocumentManager.exe files.
Or you can change Namespace and AssemblyName trough UI by navigating to Properties > Application > Assembly Name.
When you create a new C# Windows Forms Application in Visual Studio 2012, It has a Properties folder containing a Resources.resx file.
How do I access this file?
I have tried:
ResourceManager rm=new ResourceManager("Resources.resx",typeof(MyClass).Assembly);
string s=rm.GetString("MyString");
But I get System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException because for some reason it appends .resources to the filename so it's looking for Resources.resx.resources.
I then appended .resources to the filename to see if it might actually work. It didn't, same exception, why?
I also tried using the ResxResourceReader class but it looks for a resx file in a directory, and this specific resx file I'm trying to access is not stored in a directory, it's compiled in to my assemblies so that doesn't seem to be helping either.
I thought it'd be really simple, maybe it is and I'm just overlooking something?
If it's not simple, I might as well create a C# class and hard-code my strings (only type of resource I need right now).
And another question: If the resx file is compiled in to your exe, does that mean you can't change it's values during runtime?
It is plain simple (usually).
Use the Properties class!
Properties.Resources.MyString
The Properties folder you see in your Solution Explorer is not just a fancy folder ;p Visual Studio generates a class to access all your resources with ease.
I have a console application that builds some default classes for me from a database. When the files are built, I want to be able to refresh my folders and see the new files in my class library.
However no matter what I do the files don't show up unless I go in and manually add existing files. Is there a way for VS2010 to look at the file folder and add in anything that is in that folder to the project? For example:
Folder > File1.cs, File2.cs, File3.cs, File4.cs
VS2010 sees
Folder > File1.cs
How can I make VS2010 show these new classes?
Your problem is that you will only see files that are included and referenced in your .csproj file. This is by and large a good thing because it gives you ultimate control over what is taken into account in the project or not. This is causing you a problem though, because the created files which are inserted into your project directory aren't being referenced. As you have mentioned you can include the files manually, but I understand that you wish this process to be automatic.
The best way to resovle this in my opinion is instead of having a project create the files, use design-time T4 templates. Design-time T4 templates are files which resemble pre-Razor ASP.NET views, which allow code generation within your project. You can access your database, format your classes and then output .cs files directly into your project without building it. This is extremely convenient becuase it lets you work on catching compile-time errors that may come up based on the output without having to do a complete build.
More information about using T4 can be found here.
And a good walkthrough can be found here.
Haven't tried this personally, but you should be able to do it using this..
First gain a reference to your project using your apps' solution, then with the Visual Studio automation framework (DTE):
ProjectItems p = Project.ProjectItems;
p.AddFromFile("File1.cs");
Taken from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/envdte.projectitems.addfromfile.aspx
I would read further into it.
Select the project where you can find your file
On top of your solution explorer you can select "show all files"
Select your files and include
Adding them automatically can be done from another app or script by modifying your projects .csproj/vbproj file
<Compile Include="My Project\MyClass.vb" />
This must be done in the correct itemgroup.
I think this is not directly possible. You may write a template file (t4) in order to create you cs files and they will be added to project when the transformation file is run.
In order to run the transformation file after / before build, you may write a pre/post build event.
That will require you to create a VS add-in.. you can find an example here...
Okay so I have a console application that is building some default classes for me from a database.
Can't you let this application write all classes in one file, say Proxy.cs or Entities.cs. Then every time you regenerate the file and rebuild the project, you can access the new classes.