I'm working on a game written in C# using VS2013 and monogame. However, monogame doesn't support the XNA content pipeline (still), so the going advice is to build your content separately using Microsoft's XNA and VS2010. Since I didn't want to clutter my primary development machine (Win8) with VS2010 et cetera, I created a Win7 virtual machine to run Win7 along with VS2010 and all the tooling I need to build my content. All my project and solution files have corresponding 2010 versions, and the 2010 solution only has the necessary projects to build the content.
I can successfully build the content, but only if it's present direcly on the VM's hard disk (C:\). If I map a local drive to a network share on the host machine and attempt to build, I get a build time error. Why do I want to do this? Because I want a single copy of the source tree so I can iterate at a decent speed. It's just far too painful and error-prone if I have a separate source tree in the VM.
Here's the build error I get:
Error loading pipeline assembly "S:\Src\ContentPipelineExtension\bin\x86\Debug\Newtonsoft.Json.dll".
I have S:\ mapped to my network share. Newtonsoft.Json.dll exists at the indicated path.
I have tried:
specifying /verbosity:d when building to see if any more information is output. There isn't.
attaching a debugger to the MSBuild.exe process with break on any exception enabled. It never breaks.
using subst instead of Windows Explorer's drive mapping tool (it might be using subst behind the scenes, but I wanted to be sure).
debugging MSBuild, but I hit the "mismatched leave" bug when I did so.
applied the workaround for the mismatched leave bug and debugged the build simultaneously on both C:\ and S:\. In both cases, I put a breakpoint right before XNA's BuildContent task was called. I let both builds run until they hit this breakpoint, and then I opened the locals windows, side-by-side. I compared all locals and found no difference apart from the expected C:\ versus S:\ path roots.
spelunking through the XNA code in ILSpy to try and figure out where it's going wrong, but have had no luck with that either
enabling full trust on the network share in CAS by executing: CasPol.exe -m -ag 1.2 -url file://S:\* FullTrust. No change in behavior.
enabling Fusion Log Viewer (fuslogvw.exe) and checking out its log. It says it has successfully loaded the assembly!
added <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true"/> to my MSBuild.exe.config. No change.
Why does the build fail when running off my mapped S:\ and succeed when a copy of the source is placed on my C:\?
UPDATE: I just found the most awful work-around. I modified my ContentPipelineExtension project's Output Path such that it is an absolute directory on my C:\. This allows the build to complete successfullly, but is obviously far from ideal.
Here is a hack I used. It's not a satisfying answer (and I won't mark it as accepted), but in the absence of a better solution, it will save me an enormous amount of time and pain.
I edited my 2010 project files and changed my output paths to something like this:
<OutputPath>$(TEMP)\ContentPipelineExtension\bin\x86\Debug\</OutputPath>
The TEMP environment variable resolves to a folder on C:\ and saves me hard-coding a specific path. Now I can build the project from my Win7 VM using the same source tree as I use in my primary Win8 machine.
Related
I have a simple application using a product activation system offered by cryptlex (cryptlex.com).
The program works correctly on my computer, but when I try to run the program on another machine it returns this error:
I've already made sure that the dll is inside the executable folder and everything looks OK.
When I remove all part of cryptlex the program works perfectly on any machine (x86-x64)
I used depencywalker to check for errors and found these two in the executable that uses cryptlex:
Windows 7 64bits,
.NET Version: 4.0
You can use Process Monitor to record all file activities of the program. Set a filter for your executable. After reproducing the error, save the log as XML file.
Then run ProcMon Analyzer (note: I'm the author of it). It will analyze the file and give a list of DLLs that were not found.
You could also do that manually, but note that some DLLs may not be found at first, but later be found when looking in the %PATH% environment variable etc. The tool will remove all those entries which have PATH NOT FOUND first but SUCCESS later.
While the DLL is present, have you checked the bitrate?
Most C# projects default to building against Any CPU - if the DLL is specific to a bitrate (ie x86 or x64) then it might be that the program picks the wrong bitrate on end machines (usually x86) but the right one on your machine (x64). This is usually best resolved by building out different x86 and x64 versions; it's messier, but only .NET itself is good at using the Any CPU paradigm.
The exception should have detail about what DLL in particular was not found - maybe look closer?
GPSVC and IESHIMS missing should not be a problem; as indicated by the hour glass, they're deferred dependencies anyway.
Windows 8, VS2013 IIS8,5
I'm trying to connect to a local WEB API by connecting to processes w3pv.exe (Managed (v4.0.30319), 19). The website front end and back end is both running fine on my local IIS. Right after publishing my x86 web API to the local IIS i try to connect to the process, where the break point states "The Breakpoints will not currently be hit. No symbols where loaded for this document". My colleague' can without any problems debug from his local computer.
So far I have.
Reinstalled VS2013.
Checked All Debug Properties
-Project -> build: Define DEBUG constant check / Define TRACE constant check.
Generate serialization assembly = Auto. Advanced build settings -> Debug info = full
Enable Just My Code: Check, Use Managed Compatibility Mode: Check
Enable Edit and Continue : Check
Made sure all Debug mode is set and all project Configured to Active solution platform x86, marked Debug and Build.
Deleted all bin and obj folders, as well as pdb folder in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files
Reset IIS.
Set Select Code Type to Automatically determine the type of code to debug
Checked in IIS that .Net compilation -> Debug and Enable Prefetch is set to true.
And I still get the same error message. Anyone found anything in addition to this?
I have encountered similar problems many times while training new employees in our very complicated devenv, so here is our internal step by step instruction:
Don't panic
Make sure you attached the debugger to the correct process - you debug the plugin by launching VMS which is external app that has separate config file where the plugin path is stored, so when you change just your configuration Debug/Release it doesn't work.
Make sure you have symbols generated for the assembly Project properties->Build->Advanced->Output section
Make sure the build path hasn't changed. You may have accidentally changed the path and you may only think that the assembly you are trying to debug is the correct one.
Investigating the information you provided this is only help I can think of. My guess is the files you publish are not the files you're debugging locally.
RESOLVED (embarrassed)
A few day's ago, I downloaded the front-end code for the website from the VPN (GIT). I forgot to update the code-behind reference in the App.js file in the front end root. This, of course, referred to the API on the cloud, and not my local API.
This took me way to long to find out. But, at the same time, it's not a solution I've seen so far on the web.
Thanks for all your help.
I'm having an issue with loading symbols on my ASP.NET MVC project. The first time I load visual studio and debug my project, symbols are loaded in roughly 2 seconds. I then end the debug session, make a code modification, and debug again, and the symbol load time is about a minute. Based on the research I have done, here are some applicable settings on my machine/VS:
In Options/Debugging/Symbols/Symbol file locations, "Microsoft Symbol Servers" is unchecked, and there are no additional locations.
Options/Debugging/Symbols/Cache symbols in this directory is "G:\Symbol Cache". I did click "Load all symbols" and I have inspected that directory and I see lots of symbols.
Just my code is enabled.
The _NT_SYMBOL_PATH and _NT_ALT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variables are not defined on my machine.
Options/Debugging/Symbols/Automatically load symbols for is set to "Only specified modules", with no modules specified.
I have tried both debug and release builds, with identical results. Ctrl + F5 loads the site almost immediately.
I too had this problem, the cause was that I had accidently enabled the "Microsoft Symbol Server"
You can disable it by going to Tools > Options > Debugging > Symbols and uncheck the "Microsoft Symbol Server"
Now it loads just as fast as it used to.
I too had this problem and noticed that it was mostly related to 3rd-party assemblies acquired via NuGet. In these cases, Visual Studio was trying to load PDBs from paths that apparently existed on the original author's machine (i.e. D:\OriginalAuthor\MyVisualStudioProjects\AwesomeNuGetPackage) but on my machine the same path referred to an optical drive. I then discovered via Command Prompt that if you tried to change directory to an optical drive that didn't have a disc in the tray, it took a very long time (~30 seconds) to fail. With this in mind, my solution was to simply place a DVD in the tray. At that point Visual Studio was able to very quickly determine that the path didn't exist, skip loading the PDB, and go straight into debug.
So, if Visual Studio is taking a long time to load symbols, watch the Output window for the paths it's trying to access and verify that you can quickly access (or quickly fail to access) those paths yourself via Command Prompt.
This brings up an interesting question about security/privacy--apparently Visual Studio is storing the absolute path of the original PBD within the assembly. I suppose this isn't a super critical issue, but from a privacy perspective I don't really want my absolute filesystem paths being exposed to the public without my knowledge.
Just try this Debug -> Delete All Breakpoints.
Its works on me.
I had 2 .dll's giving me grief that I didn't need to debug that started taking minutes to load. The afore mentioned solutions didn't help. So I went to Options -> Debugging -> Symbols and under the radio button for "All modules, unless excluded" click on "Specify excluded modules" link. Then type the .dll's that are causing issues.
I have a C# web application that I've been working on which has built properly since I began working with it. I moved the entire solution into a different folder, and now, when I try to build it says "Rebuild All failed" with no other errors. I have reviewed the verbose output from build; but, I don't see anything that jumps out at me as causing the problem. If I move the solution back to the original location, it will build again. Anyone know why the new location breaks the build?
Thanks.
The most likely cause of this error is that the location you are moving the solution to is not trusted.
For example, if you move the solution to a protected folder like C:\Program Files or C:\Windows or a network location.
If this is not the case, please advise where you are moving the file too and perhaps share any errors from your build log.
I believe I found it- turns out, moving it several directories deeper may have blown the maximum path size for NTFS (see this question: VS2010 - same soltuion (IE SVN checkout), different locations, one builds, one fails any ideas?). I moved my project to a root directory in c: and now it's compiling normally in VS2010.
A friendlier error would have been nice; but, hey, what can you do?
We have a moderately sized solution, with about 20 projects. In one of them I have my business entities. On compiling any project, visual studio waits and hangs about one and a half minutes on this BusinessEntities project.
I tried our solution in SharpDevelop and it compiles our complete solution, in 18 seconds. Similar timing with MSBuild.
My guess is that VS is trying to find out if the project needs a compile, but this process is about 15 times slower than actually performing the compile!!
I can't switch to the great sharpdevelop, it lacks some small, but essential requirements for our debugging scenarios.
Can I prevent VS from checking this project, And have it compile the projects without such a check, just like sharpdevelop?
I already know about unchecking projects in configuration management to prevent building some projects, but my developers will forget they need to compile this project after updating to latest sources and they face problems that seem strange to them.
Edit: Interesting results of an investigation: The delay happens to one of the projects only. In configuration manager I unchecked all projects, then compiled each of them individually. All projects compile in a few seconds!! The point is this: if that special project is built directly, compiles in a few seconds, if it is being built (or skipped, because it is up-to-date) as a result of building another project that depends on it, VS hangs for about a minute and half, and then decides to compile it (or skip it). My conclusion: Visual studio is checking to know if any files are changed, but for some reasons, for this special project it is extremely inefficient!!
I'd go to Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run and then change the "MSBuild project build [output|build log] verbosity" to Diagnostic. At that level it will include timings which should help you track down the issue.
We had the same problem with an ASP.NET MVC web project running in Visual Studio 2013. We build the project and nothing happens for about a minute or so and then the output window shows that we are compiling.
Here's what fixed it... open the .csproj file in a text editor and set MvcBuildViews to false:
<MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews>
I had to use sysinternals process monitor to figure this out but it's clearly the cause for my situation. The site compiles in less than 5 seconds now and previously took over a minute. During that minute the Asp.net compilation process was putting files and directories into the Temporary Asp.net Files folder.
Warning: If you set this, you'll no longer precompile your views so you will lose the ability to see syntax errors in your views at build time.
There is the possibility that you are suffering from VS inspecting other freshly built assemblies for the benefit of the currently compiling project.
When an assembly is built, VS will inspect the references of the target assembly, which if they are feshly built or new versions, may include actually loading them in a .Net domain, which bears all the burdens of loading an assembly as though you were going to run it. The build can get progressively slower as it rebuilds more and more projects. When one assembly becomes newer the others do a lot more work. This is one possible explanation for why building by itself, versus already built, versus building clean, all have seemingly relevantly differing results. Its really tht the others changed and not about the one being compiled.
VS will 'mark down' the last 'internal' build number of the referenced assembly and look to see if the referenced assembly actually changed as it rolls through its build process. If its not differnt, a ton of work gets skipped. And yes, there are internal assembly build numbers that you dont control. This is probalby not in any way due to the actual c# compiler or its work or anything post-compile, but pre-compile steps necessary for the most general cases.
There are several reference oriented settings you can play with, and depending on your dev, test, or deployments needs, the functional differences may be irrelevant, however may profoundly impact how VS behaves and how long it takes during build.
Go to the references of one of the projects in Solution Explorer:
1) click on a reference
2) open the properties pane if its not (not the Property Pages or the Property Manager)
3) look at 'Copy Local', 'Embed Interop Types', 'Reference Output Assembly'; those may be very applicable and probably something good to know about regardless. I strongly suggest looking up what they do on MSDN. 'Reference Output Assembly' may or may not show in the list.
4) unload the project, and edit the .proj file in VS as text. look for the assembly reference in the XML and look for 'Private'. This means whether the assembly referenced is to be treated as though its going to be a private assembly from the referencing assemblies perspective, vs a shared one. Which is sort of a wordy way of saying, will that assembly be deployed as a unit with the other assemblies together. This is very important toward unburdening things. Background: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164080.aspx
So the basic idea here is that you want to configure all of these to be the least expensive, both during build and after deployment. If you are building them together, then for example you probably really don't need 'Copy Local'. Id hate to say more about how you should configure them without knowing more about your needs, but its a very fine thing to go read a few good paragraphs about each. This gets very tricky however, because you also influence whether VS will use the the stale old one when resolving before the referenced one is rebuilt. As a further example explaiing that its good to go read about these, Copy Local can use the local copy, even though its stale, so having this set can be double bad. Just remember the goal at the moment is to lower the burden of VS loading newly built assemblies jsut to compile the others.
Lastly, for now, I can easily say that hanging for only 1.5 mins is getting off very lucky. There are people with much much worse build times due to things like this ;)
Some troubleshooting idea's that have not been mentioned:
Clean solution?
Delete Obj and Bin folders plus the .suo file? FYI, neither Clean nor Rebuild will delete non-build files, eg files copied during a pre-build command.
Turn off VS scanning outside files. Options > tools > environment > document > detect when file is changed outside the environment?
Rollback SVN history to confirm when it started to occur? What changed? If the project file on day 1 takes the same time, recreate the project, add all the files and build.
Otherwise could you please run Process Monitor and let us know what Visual Studio is doing in the prep-build stage?
Sounds silly, but remove all breakpoints first. It sped up my pre-build checks massively - still don't know why though.
Based on the (limited) information provided one possibility is that there could be a pre-build action specified in the project file that is slow to compile.
Try disabling platform verification task as described here.
If your individual projects are compiling correctly then all you can do is change order of compilation by setting dependent projects explicitly in configuration.
Try to visualize your project dependency hierarchy and set dependent projects. For example, if your business entities project is referenced in each project, then in configuration of each project, this project must be selected as dependent.
When an explicit build order is not set, visual studio is analyzing projects to create an order of building project. Setting explicit dependent projects wiki make visual studio skip this step and use the order provided by you.
With such an extreme delay on a single project and no other avenue seeming to provide a reason I would attempt to build that specific project while running procmon from sysinternals and filter out all the success messages. You could probably also narrow it down to just the file system actions as well. From your description I might guess that the files are being locked by an external source like the event collection or workflow management process services.
Other things to consider would be whether or not this is a totally clean build machine or if it has been used to perhaps test the builds as well? If so, is there a chance that someone mapped an IIS application path to the project directly or registered it as a service location?
If you run procmon and see no obvious locks or conflicts I would create a totally new solution and project and copy the files over to see if that project also has the same delay. If it does have the same delay I would create a sample project of the same type but generic data (essentially empty) and see if that too is slow. If the new project with the same files builds fine you can then diff the directories to see what the variance is that causes the problem (perhaps a config or project setting).
For me, thoroughly disabling code analyzers helped per instructions here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/code-quality/disable-code-analysis?view=vs-2019#net-framework-projects.
I thought my code analyzers were already off, but adding the extra xml helped.
Thanks Kaleb's for the suggestion to set "MSBuild project build [output|build log] verbosity" to Diagnostic. The first message took more than 10 seconds to display:
Property reassignment: $(Features)=";flow-analysis;flow-analysis" (previous value: ";flow-analysis") at C:\myProjectDirectory\packages\Microsoft.NetFramework.Analyzers.2.9.3\build\Microsoft.NetFramework.Analyzers.props (32,5)
Which led me to the code analyzers.
Just in case someone else trips into this issue:
In my case the delay was being caused by an invalid path entry in "additional include directories" that referred to a non accessible UNC location.
Once this was corrected, the delay disappeared.