what is sourcesafe?
i am trying to download it to see if it will work well with c# because someone told me to download it for a job, but i don't even understand what it is?
is it built into the visual studio ide or what?
SourceSafe is a poor and obsolete source control system.
It can store an application's source code and show revision history, and allow multiple developers to work on the same project efficiently.
It has been replaced by Team Foundation Server.
Sourcesafe is a version control system from Microsoft, some would say not a very good one. It's not part of Visual studio however it does integrate into it. MS have now replaced VSS in their Team System version of Visual Studio.
Source control is a great idea, and experience with them will definitely help your Job hunting, but don't constrain yourself to Sourcesafe, also checkout (pun intended) systems like Subversion etc.
Related
I have created a C# application in Visual Studio 2017. Now I would like to distribute my application as a single windows installer file.
I was hoping for a simple one-click solution (select all the files I want to include -> voila! there's the installer). But it seems to be not that easy :-(
I often read that Visual Studio supports setup projects. But that does not seem to be the case anymore, right?
Third party tools are either very complicated (e.g. Wix, Inno Setup) or very expensive (e.g. Advanced Installer).
Is there really no simple way to wrap some files in an .msi Windows installer?
Does Microsoft provide no tooling to create such installers?
At one point, Microsoft did remove the "Visual Studio Installer Project" support from Visual Studio1. And then they later relented and added support back. I can't remember which versions didn't have support, I think it was 2012 and 2013.
These days (for VS2017), to get the Visual Studio Installer Project support, you add it from the marketplace:
This extension provides the same functionality that currently exists in Visual Studio 2015 for Visual Studio Installer projects. To use this extension, you can either open the Extensions and Updates dialog, select the online node, and search for "Visual Studio Installer Projects Extension," or you can download directly from this page.
Personally, however, I'd go with WIX. It does have a learning curve but I think it's learning worth doing.
1For what I personally see as very good reasons. You had to have a full-blown install of Visual Studio to make them work, they didn't really integrate with MSBuild, which makes them a pain if/when you want to move to automating your builds.
VS Installer Projects: Several good answers already - worth trying out. As stated by others you can use Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Installer Projects - as limited as they are (bullet list form). They feature some pre-requisite functionality as I recall. I have limited experience with the tool. Could work for something very simple, but you will quickly discover limitations.
WiX: Personally I would use WiX since it is also free and flexible - it takes some effort, but is very capable. Here is a WiX quick start tip answer (frankly not my favorite answer, but it has been upvoted more than usual and updated frequently - hopefully it still has its essence of helpfulness).
IsWiX: There is also IsWix - a GUI tool to help create WiX setups (Chris Painter's work). His WiX tutorials and a quick youtube demo.
Et Al: The commercial tools (Installshield, Advanced Installer (see Bogdan's answer in this "thread"), PACE Suite, etc...) are also good - your time costs too. Can be shocking once you add it up - and you will definitely get running quicker with a commercial tool. How to create windows installer (links to pretty comprehensive lists of tools and some MSI information). Further links below.
Other than that, I'll just link to a few pre-existing answers with info about various tools:
Quick review of different MSI tools
What installation product to use? InstallShield, WiX, Wise, Advanced Installer, etc
or very expensive (e.g. Advanced Installer).
There is a also a free edition which includes a Visual Studio extension for Advanced Installer, which you can use to build MSI packages.
The following tutorial shows how you can use the features from the free edition ("Simple" project type):
https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-guide/tutorial-ai-ext-vs.html
https://www.advancedinstaller.com/user-guide/tutorial-simple.html
P.S. I work on the team building Advanced Installer.
I have developed a WinForms application. Now I want to upgrade my application by adding new features and optimizing it. One way to do this is by just copying the project folder and making changes in that copied project folder. I want to know is this the proper way of version controlling in software development by just copying the project folder for every new version or are there some systematic methods available to manage all the versions of my application. I really want to learn about these things. Please guide me.
Azure DevOps (formerly Visual Studio Team Services, or VSTS for short) is a free* online Microsoft system which incorporates source control, a general overview of it can be found here. There are other systems but I'd highly recommend this as it ties in with Visual Studio nicely.
Specifics on two type of version control Azure DevOps supports are:
Team Foundation Version Control
Git
Git seems to be becoming the preferred system now, it's what Microsoft default to and my workplace has now moved to that setup.
Each system allows you to check-in or commit a code change that you make, keeps a history of these changes and enables you to roll-back to and view previous code.
Once you have learnt those basics start looking at branches/repos, when you start working alongside another developer on the same project I'd recommend doing some more reading to learn how to resolve merge conflicts and best practices to avoid them.
*It's free for up to five developers
I've been having this problem with visual studio that I cannot seem to find a simple answer to. I would like to be able to save out versions of my visual studio project so that I can test a concept I have in mind that may dramatically change my code and if I do not like the outcome, I would like to be able to load up a older (previous) version of my project. Every googled answer I have found for this problem has been some kind of big professional development version control software. Its crazy to me that there is not a simpler way. I suppose I could copy and paste my project dir each time I want to save a "version" and just rename it, but this seems rather archaic. I use many graphic applications that simply have a "save as with new version" feature and I can easelly load and version I have saved.
any advice would be amazingly helpful.
thank you!!!
Just use git!
https://git-for-windows.github.io/
It is a very simple light weight version control system, that will do everything you are asking for. It is free, and should only take a few minutes to set up.
I made the mistake of changing a subroutine in a project and publishing it. Now I want to revert back to the older subroutine. Is it possible to find the older project and retrieve the older subroutine?
Team Foundation Server can do this for you. You can now be set up without any hassle on your developement machine. The integration in the VS Team Explorer is seamless. Very easy to handle. See this guide for working with source control projects
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181384.aspx
Even easier and not so much overhead on your machine: sign up for Visual Studio Online (free for a 5 user team). The cloud source control is set up in minutes. If you are not against saving your data in the cloud give it a try.
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/what-is-visual-studio-online-vs.aspx
The alternatives (SVN, GIT) are also very good (consider reading about the difference of central and decentral source control) but need a little more knowledge and a good workflow.
If you happen to have lost changes before installing version control there's nothing you can do in visual studio. You can try a restore on file level (the option would be previous versions in the windows explorer)
as source code is plain text. There`s a "previous version" mechanism of windows explorer! Just go to the properties of your project folder
Note: previous version / shadow copying must have been enabled before or else the tab will be blank.
No, it is not possible unless you have stored your code in source control. It sounds like you have not yet done this, so I suggest using this is a (harsh) lesson and make the next move the one to install some kind of SCM.
You can signup for a free version of TFS online from microsoft the will integrate directly into Visual Studio. That will allow you to instantly check in changes and view the history of files and in this case, get a previous version of a file.
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/what-is-visual-studio-online-vs.aspx
my team have built many tools for our project using win forms and Visual Studio 2005. We are thinking about upgrading to VS 2010.
Just wanted a heads up on any compatibility issues and also any benefits of upgrading.
Does upgrading involve lot of time and effort or does Visual Studio take care of it?
Your answers will be help us take a decision. Thanks.
Pros:
.NET improvements (provided that you upgrade the framework version)
Availability of newer 3rd-party libraries and tools for newer .NET (same as above)
IDE improvements
Neutral:
WinForms hasn't changed much between .NET 2.0 and 4.0.
Cons:
VS 2010 is a vastly heavier program, requiring much more CPU and RAM and faster disks to operate smoothly.
You decide.
as far as I know are there no downside's
I only know that all your changes in the visual side are gonna be placed in [name of form or usercontrol].Designer.[cs/vb]
I am a user of VS2010 and Im really happy with it so,
but why not wait on VS2012?
Kind Regards,
Corné
Yes it is possible and easy but lot of depends on the features you have used in your app. It should not be depreciated in VS 2010. Take a back up of your project and try to convert it, conversion wizard will list out all the warnings and error it faced while converting your app.Then you can take a decision on the basis of it whether to upgrade your app or not?
You'll want to check the breaking changes in C# 2008 and C# 2010, then the migration issues in .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but only if you choose to upgrade the Framework target. Simply upgrading it to be readable and compilable by VS 2010 should not introduce any major issues. But, check if your project involve external component that's upgraded/removed in VS 2010, such as Reporting components, SQL connection, etc. In my experience, third party component suffer the most.
As for the benefit, lots. Check the Visual Studio Gallery for some extremely useful extensions (my favourite is the free Coderush Xpress), experience the joy of C# REPL with Roslyn, or heck, simply the Intellisense improvements makes me dread every time I'm forced to use 2008 or other IDEs.
Open the VS2005 solution in VS2010 and a wizard will open and upgrade your solution.
Just take a backup on the existing solution and give it a try. VS 2010 is very nice!
Everyone has different expectations and differences in their list of pros and cons. As such, the best way to decide if it's right for you is to go ahead and try it. As already mentioned, it will upgrade your project files (including making a backup for you first) when you try to open them.
You can download the trial from the Microsoft website and install it alongside your existing VS2005 install. If you're worried about installing alongside, install it into a virtual machine or download the ready made virtual machine images from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/briankel/archive/2010/06/25/now-available-visual-studio-2010-rtm-virtual-machine-with-sample-data-and-hands-on-labs.aspx