Tag Archives: Visual Studio

Setting up your Mac for .NET development

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Last night I spent a few hours getting my Windows virtualization setup so I could use Visual Studio from the Mac. It ended up being way cooler and easier than I thought. All it requires is two simple things, Parallels and mklink.

Parallels

I was hesitant about paying $79 for virtualization software when other software like VirtualBox is completely free. My advice, try the free trial of Parallels and you will understand why it is worth the price.

It allows you to create shortcuts to Windows apps in the Mac Dock.

Integrates the Windows task bar with the Mac menu bar.

Putting it all together, you get to run Windows apps right beside Mac apps in what Parallels calls Coherence mode.

Some other notable features are:

  • Integration with Bootcamp partition
  • Integration with Windows start meu
  • Much more…

The overall performance is good. I noticed some slowness when dragging windows around, but for everyday usage, it runs great. There are some oddities of using Parallels in Coherence mode, but no deal breakers. I definitely recommend it because of the low overhead in context switching between Mac and Windows applications.

mklink

Even with Parallels, Windows runs on a different filesystem than the Mac. It does offer shared profiles, but I only wanted to share my Visual Studio project files.

mklink is a tool I had never used until last night. For those of you familiar with Linux, it is simliar to the ln command. Here is how I used it.

mklink /d "c:\Users\Brian\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects" \\.psf\Home\Documents\Projects

What this simple command will do is create a symbolic to my Mac home folder for all Visual Studio projects. From Windows, it works like a normal folder.

Now, I can easily code side by side in TextMate and Visual Studio straight from OSX.

A MSBuild convention proposal – Targets per assembly

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MSBuild is a very powerful build tool. Unfortunately, in my experience, I have seen it utilized very little. Instead, developers rely entirely on Visual Studio for the build, which is a mistake. I think there are a couple reasons for this:

  • Modifying the build feels like you are mucking in the internals of Visual Studio
  • There is no convention based approaches for how to handle custom bulid targets

Now, you could go the way of NAnt, and have complete independence from Visual Studio. I think this is a mistake as well. Visual Studio, while being a royal pain much of the time, is still a very very very powerful tool. I believe we should embrace it, while using MSBuild plus conventions to achieve ultimate flexibility.

The proposal

It’s actually quite simple. Each assembly/project already has its own *.csproj file, which is in essence a partial MSBuild file. The problem is editing it is weird and scary at times, because it is auto-generated by Visual Studio.

Just add the following to any or all your csproj files.

<Project>
  ... All the visual studio muck ...
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildProjectName).targets" Condition="Exists('$(MSBuildProjectName).targets')" />
</Project>

Then add a file with that name. If your projects name is Reference.Web, then add a file named Reference.Web.targets and include it in the project. The content could contain something like the following.

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
 
  <ItemGroup>
    <Files Include="$(SolutionDir)\configuration\$(Configuration)\$(AssemblyName).*.config" />
    <Files Include="$(SolutionDir)\configuration\$(Configuration)\Common.*"/>
  </ItemGroup>
 
  <Target Name="InstallConfiguration">    
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(Files)" DestinationFolder="$(OutputPath)" />
  </Target>
 
  <!-- Override the AfterBuild target -->
  <Target Name="AfterBuild" DependsOnTargets="InstallConfiguration" />
 
</Project>

Now you have a build file separate from the project that is really easy setup and use, straight for Visual Studio.

The only gotcha is Visual Studio won’t automatically notice the build file changes, so you still have to relad the assembly after you make a build file change.

UPDATE – More robust Import statement

Via @sayedihashimi

Even better would be a conditional import, and you should use the MSBuildProjectName property instead of AssemblyName.

Analyzing Visual Studio Build Performance

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Every now and again, your build time gets so long you have to investigate what the cause is. Since Visual Studio uses MSBuild, it is possible to get very detailed build information.

The first step is getting into diagnostic mode. This will print out way too much information, but it is the only mode that prints out execution summaries for each project. To get into diagnostics mode, simply go to Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run. From there, you can change the MSBuild verbosity to diagnostic.

12-22-2009 7-44-06 PM
12-22-2009 7-45-08 PM

Now just build (or rebuild). Then copy the build output to a txt file and save it somewhere.

12-22-2009 7-50-52 PM

The only problem with the output is the amount of information (300K lines on a rebuild of a medium size project). It has ton’s of valuable information, but an easy way to process it is needed. The biggest value, in my opinion, is the section at the end of every project where the Summary information about projects, targets, and tasks are displayed. To help retrieve this info, I wrote a quick little Powershell script.

 
param
(
    [string] $file = ""
)
 
if(!(test-path $file)){
    throw "$file not found"
}
 
function accumulate_and_print_project_info(){
    begin{
        $curr_project = ""
        $should_print = $false
    }
    process{
 
 
        if($_ -match "----- (re)?build (all )?started: project: (.*) -----"){
            $curr_project = $matches[3]
            "----- $curr_project -----"
            $should_print = $false
        }elseif($curr_project -and !$should_print -and $_.EndsWith("Summary:")){
            $_
            $should_print = $true
        }elseif($curr_project -and $should_print -and $_ -eq ""){
            $should_print = $false
        }elseif($should_print){
            $_
        }
    }
}
 
gc $file | accumulate_and_print_project_info

The output is going to look something like the following.

----- ControlPanel, Configuration: Development Any CPU -----
Project Performance Summary:
     2672 ms  C:\Users\brian.hartsock\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Api\cp3\ControlPanel\ControlPanel.csproj   1 calls
Target Performance Summary:
        0 ms  CreateSatelliteAssemblies                  1 calls
        0 ms  _ComputeNonExistentFileProperty            1 calls
        0 ms  Clean                                      1 calls
        0 ms  _AfterCompileWinFXInternal                 1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeCompile                              1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeClean                                1 calls
        0 ms  AfterBuild                                 1 calls
        0 ms  GetTargetPath                              1 calls
        0 ms  _CheckForCompileOutputs                    1 calls
        0 ms  EntityDeploy                               1 calls
        0 ms  ResolveVCProjectReferences                 1 calls
        0 ms  _SetEmbeddedWin32ManifestProperties        1 calls
        0 ms  StyleCopForceFullAnalysis                  1 calls
        0 ms  CleanPublishFolder                         1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeBuild                                1 calls
        0 ms  CoreResGen                                 1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeRebuild                              1 calls
        0 ms  _CopySourceItemsToOutputDirectory          1 calls
        0 ms  AfterResGen                                1 calls
        0 ms  Build                                      1 calls
        0 ms  SetWin32ManifestProperties                 1 calls
        0 ms  AssignTargetPaths                          1 calls
        0 ms  CoreBuild                                  1 calls
        0 ms  AfterResolveReferences                     1 calls
        0 ms  Compile                                    1 calls
        0 ms  ResGen                                     1 calls
        0 ms  AfterClean                                 1 calls
        0 ms  Rebuild                                    1 calls
        0 ms  PrepareResourceNames                       1 calls
        0 ms  BuildOnlySettings                          1 calls
        0 ms  PrepareResources                           1 calls
        0 ms  CleanReferencedProjects                    1 calls
        0 ms  AfterMarkupCompilePass1                    1 calls
        0 ms  FileClassification                         1 calls
        0 ms  AfterCompile                               1 calls
        0 ms  CompileRdlFiles                            1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeResolveReferences                    1 calls
        0 ms  CreateCustomManifestResourceNames          1 calls
        0 ms  ResolveReferences                          1 calls
        0 ms  DesignTimeMarkupCompilation                1 calls
        0 ms  AfterRebuild                               1 calls
        0 ms  GetReferenceAssemblyPaths                  1 calls
        0 ms  PrepareForRun                              1 calls
        0 ms  AfterCompileWinFX                          1 calls
        0 ms  BeforeResGen                               1 calls
        1 ms  PrepareRdlFiles                            1 calls
        1 ms  GetCopyToOutputDirectoryItems              1 calls
        1 ms  SplitResourcesByCulture                    1 calls
        1 ms  _SplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence     1 calls
        1 ms  _GenerateCompileInputs                     1 calls
        1 ms  _GenerateSatelliteAssemblyInputs           1 calls
        1 ms  GetWinFXPath                               1 calls
        1 ms  EntityClean                                1 calls
        1 ms  _CheckForInvalidConfigurationAndPlatform   1 calls
        1 ms  ResolveProjectReferences                   1 calls
        1 ms  PrepareForBuild                            1 calls
        3 ms  GetFrameworkPaths                          1 calls
        8 ms  CoreClean                                  1 calls
       14 ms  IncrementalClean                           1 calls
       17 ms  CopyFilesToOutputDirectory                 1 calls
       17 ms  _CleanGetCurrentAndPriorFileWrites         1 calls
       66 ms  ResolveAssemblyReferences                  1 calls
      399 ms  _CopyFilesMarkedCopyLocal                  1 calls
      519 ms  StyleCop                                   1 calls
      636 ms  CoreCompile                                1 calls
      974 ms  PostBuildEvent                             1 calls
Task Performance Summary:
        0 ms  Delete                                     2 calls
        0 ms  Message                                    6 calls
        0 ms  EntityDeploy                               1 calls
        0 ms  GetFrameworkSdkPath                        1 calls
        0 ms  CreateProperty                             1 calls
        0 ms  AssignTargetPath                           5 calls
        0 ms  MakeDir                                    2 calls
        1 ms  ConvertToAbsolutePath                      1 calls
        1 ms  AssignCulture                              1 calls
        1 ms  GetWinFXPath                               1 calls
        1 ms  FindAppConfigFile                          1 calls
        1 ms  ReadLinesFromFile                          2 calls
        1 ms  EntityClean                                1 calls
        2 ms  CreateItem                                 3 calls
        2 ms  WriteLinesToFile                           2 calls
        3 ms  GetFrameworkPath                           2 calls
       13 ms  RemoveDuplicates                           3 calls
       20 ms  FindUnderPath                              7 calls
       66 ms  ResolveAssemblyReference                   1 calls
      415 ms  Copy                                       6 calls
      515 ms  StyleCopTask                               1 calls
      635 ms  Csc                                        1 calls
      973 ms  Exec                                       1 calls

Now you should have all the data you need to figure out what is taking so long to build your project.

Find Orphaned Solution Files

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Each day, I am becoming more and more OCD. Tonight I wrote a script that will analyze a Visual Studio csproj file and compare it to the files in the directory. The main goal being an easy way to find orphaned files that might still be in version control. It probably only works on very vanilla projects, but I figured I would share anyways.

# find-orphanedFiles.ps1
#
# Compare files in a Visual Studio project file to the actual files in the directory
#
# Usage:
# .\find-orphanedFiles.ps1 Project\FooBar.csproj
# .\find-orphanedFiles.ps1 Project\FooBar.csproj -exclude "*.csproj","*.csproj.user","svn.ignore"
 
param
(
    $csProjFile,
    $exclude = ("*.csproj*")
)
 
function custom-gci($path=(get-location)){
    gci $path -exclude $exclude | 
    %{
        if($_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.name -ne "bin" -and $_.name -ne "obj")){
            custom-gci $_
        }elseif(!($_.PSIsContainer)){
            $_
        }
    } 
}
 
if(!(test-path $csProjFile)){
    throw "File $csprojFile does not exist"
}
 
$dir = split-path $csProjFile
$csProjfile = split-path $csProjFile -leaf
 
push-location $dir
 
$x = [xml] (gc $csProjFile)
 
$filesInProject = $x.Project.ItemGroup | 
    foreach {
        if($_.Compile) { 
            $_.Compile
        }elseif($_.None){
            $_.None
        }elseif($_.Content){
            $_.Content
        }elseif($_.EmbeddedResource){
            $_.EmbeddedResource
        }
    } | 
    select -expand include | 
    resolve-path | 
    gi | 
    select -expand fullname
 
$filesInDir = custom-gci |
    select -expand fullname
 
compare-object $filesInProject $filesInDir
 
pop-location