Rick van den Bosch - Blog : Visual Studio

Error: The Path 'path' is already mapped in workspace 'workspace'

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:35:00 GMT

Just a quick little post today: I got the error "The Path 'path' is already mapped in workspace 'workspace'" when I connected to a new Team Foundation Server and tried to map my workspace today. I had connected to a Team Foundation Services project a while back to get some shared code, but I already removed the workspace and the server binding. Even though Visual Studio didn't see any other bindings, mapping my workspace to the same folder the previous TFS binding was mapped to served me this error.

The quick solution: manually edit (or remove if you don't have any other bindings) the file VersionControl.config, which can be found under %AppData%\Local\Microsoft\Team Foundation\4.0\Cache

Hope this helps.

Visual Studio 2012 crashes when opening an ASP.NET MVC project with a cshtml open

Rick van den Bosch — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:54:59 GMT

A rather long title for this post, but that’s exactly what happened: when I opened an ASP.NET MVC 4 project with a cshtml view open, Visual Studio would crash with the error messages seen on the right. This would only occur if the first project I opened had a cshtml file open. When I opened another (type of) project first and then opened a project with a cshtml file open, the problem did not occur. Debugging Visual Studio with a new instance of Visual Studio (Inception anyone?) made things a bit clearer. (Part of) the exception information:

Source
WebEssentials2012

Message
Could not load type 'Microsoft.Less.Core.LessMixinDeclaration' from assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Extensions, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.

After searching around a bit, I found this blog post by Mads Kristensen: Web Tools 2012.2 and Web Essentials. This post talks about Web Tools 2012.2 and Web Essentials 2.5, and how an error can occur if you install Web Tools 2012.2 and don’t upgrade to Web Essentials 2.5. However, I do have Web Essentials 2.5.1 installed so this issue shouldn’t be the same as mine.

Although my situation didn’t match the one on Mads’s blog, I decided to install Web Tools 2012.2 just to see what the result would be. As it turned out, installing the Web Tools 2012.2 did solve the problem. Here’s why I think this solved it:

I had an older version of WebEssentials installed, which included specific functionality. This functionality was moved to Web Tools, and out of the new version of Web Essentials. When I updated to the new version of Web Essentials (without having Web Tools installed!), the functionality was no longer available in Web Essentials giving me the ‘Could not load type’ exception.
I’m not sure why the exception did not occur when I opened a different project first or if this is the exact reason of the exception occurring. I’ll contact Mads to share my findings, he might be able to reproduce this.

Hope this helps

Debugging JavaScript with Visual Studio in an ASP.NET MVC 4 application

Rick van den Bosch — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 05:27:00 GMT

When debugging JavaScript in an ASP.NET MVC (4) application, it is not always enough to uncheck the 'Disable script debugging' checkboxes under 'Tools' - 'Internet Options' - 'Advanced' - 'Browsing'. JavaScript inside a Razor view (a cshtml file) cannot be debugged from Visual Studio. To debug your JavaScript, move it to a separate .js file and link to that file from your Razor view. This way, breakpoints set in the JavaScript will be hit and you can debug from Visual Studio.

Hope this helps

Disclaimer: I know about the F12 Developer Tools, Firebug and all the other possibilities we have to debug JavaScript. This post is about getting JavaScript debugging to work with Visual Studio and breakpoints set in Visual Studio. For those who want it that way. So there... ;)

TIP: “Paste XML as Classes” in Visual Studio 2012

Rick van den Bosch — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 05:02:00 GMT

In the past, when you had some XML document that you wanted to translate into classes we had to create / generate a schema based on the XML file. Next, we had to generate a class based on the schema with an external tool. Not all too user friendly and somewhat time consuming.

In Visual Studio 2012 you copy the XML you want to create a class/classes for, place the cursor in a class file on the location you want the code to be added and select the following menu items: Edit – Paste Special – Paste XML as Classes. And you’re done! Just like that…

If you want to try real quick, there’s a sample XML file (books.xml) available here.

EDIT
The feature is .NET Framework 4.5 specific. Taken from this MSDN article 'Generating Data Type Classes from XML':
".NET Framework 4.5 includes a new feature to generate data type classes from XML."

Microsoft Touch Mouse, Visual Studio (2012) and scrolling

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:23:39 GMT

My Microsoft Touch Mouse stopped scrolling in Visual Studio on my Windows 8 machine some time ago. Because this kills productivity, I wanted to fix the problem. After trying some things I found that the problem only occurred when I ran Visual Studio as Administrator. Searching a bit further I found this bug to be added to Microsoft Connect. I found a workaround for the problem:

Go to the location where you have Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center installed
Open up the properties of ipoint.exe
Set it to Run as Administrator
Kill and restart ipoint.exe (or restart the machine)
Welcome back scrolling in Visual Studio…!

Hope this helps

HowTo: Have Visual Studio always run as administrator on Windows 8

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:16:46 GMT

In my previous post I wanted my Visual Studio to ‘Run as Administrator’ on my Windows 8 machine. I only managed to get this working for the pinned taskbar icon and not for items in the jumplist or for items you open by double clicking them. The solution to check the box ‘Run as Administrator’ on the compatibility tab of the file properties for devenv.exe was not a solution, because there is no more Compatibility tab in Windows 8 :).
But there is a way to have devenv.exe always ‘Run as Administrator’. Here’s how:

Right click devenv.exe en select Troubleshoot compatibility (first picture)
Select the option ‘Troubleshoot program’ after the wizard has finished detecting issues
Choose the ‘The program requires additional permissions’ option (second picture). The wizard will apply the ‘Run as Administrator’ setting to devenv.exe
Click ‘Test the program…’ (third picture - the wizard requires this) and close the wizard
Enjoy!

Unable to access the IIS metabase

Rick van den Bosch — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:48:00 GMT

I opened a solution in Visual Studio 2012 on my laptop running Windows 8, when I was presented with the error "The Web Application Project SomeWebProject is configured to use IIS. Unable to access the IIS metabase. You do not have sufficient privilege to access IIS web sites on your machine." The user I was logged in with was a local administrator and was able to open up and use IIS Manager, but still I was presented with this error. The solution to this is simple: start your Visual Studio with 'Run as Administrator'. You can do this by right clicking the shortcut and selecting 'Run as Administrator'.

TIP:
To always have your Visual Studio open with 'Run as Administrator', please follow these steps:
- right click the shortcut you are used to use
- bring up its properties
- click 'Advanced...' on the 'Shortcut' tab
- check the box 'Run as administrator' (see image below)
- close the windows with 'OK'

Somehow I felt like this was default behavior on my Win7 VS2010 install, but it might be I set up the shortcut for it there too...

Error installing the Windows Azure AppFabric Tools for Visual Studio (CTP)

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:57:20 GMT

When installing the Windows Azure AppFabric Tools for Visual Studio (found here), you might get the error message shown on the right, stating that Windows Server AppFabric is installed and that it is not compatible with this release of Windows Azure AppFabric Developer Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 - June 2011 CTP. It asks to uninstall Windows Server AppFabric and rerun this setup if you want to install Windows Azure AppFabric Developer Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 - June 2011 CTP.

When looking for the install of ‘Windows Server AppFabric’ to remove it through ‘Uninstall a program’ you won’t find this item in the list of installed programs. This might feel as a big problem heading your way…

Solution
This is, however, only a small problem on your way to Azure AppFabric development. Go to your list of installed programs and click ‘View installed updates’. Under Windows, you will find the update ‘Windows Server AppFabric (KB970622)’. Uninstall the update, restart your machine and try installing the Windows Azure AppFabric Tools for Visual Studio again…

Enjoy!

The Visual Studio 2010 Test Client for WCF services

Rick van den Bosch — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:21:00 GMT

When writing WCF services, most of us find ourselves writing quick test applications. To give you more time to do what a developer should be doing (adding business value to the project) the Visual Studio team added a WCF test client that can help you reach goals faster.

This is not a very difficult application, but it does the trick and is more than sufficient for simple testing. The WCF Test Client can be found at this location (without the ‘ (x86)’ for x86 machines): C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE.

Taken from the help:

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Test Client (WcfTestClient.exe) is a GUI tool that allows users to input test parameters, submit that input to the service, and view the response that the service sends back. It provides a seamless service testing experience when combined with WCF Service Host.

WCF Test Client screenshots:

Updated: Thanks to Marco for pointing out my typo...!

HowTo: open all files from the Find Results window

Rick van den Bosch — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 05:49:00 GMT

Here’s a quick Visual Studio tip for you…

I frequently search for a specific text in my solution because I need to do something in all places where that text occurs. Today I found out how you can open all the files that are mentioned in the Find Results window.

Search for the text you’re looking for. In my case this is ITest*.
Open up the Search Results window and select all the records where the text was found. You can do this by dragging your mouse cursor over the text or clicking the text of the first search result, holding SHIFT and clicking the text of the last.

Right click anywhere on the selected text and choose ‘Go to location’. If you click anywhere other than on selected text, you will lose the selection and you’ll probably get just one file opened. When all files are opened you will keep the ‘Go To Next Location F8’ and ‘Go To Previous Location SHIFT + F8’ functionality. That might be a nice one to loop through all the locations where your text was found. Especially when it was found more than once in one file.

Hope this helps.

* The usefulness of searching for this interface is arbitrary due to functionality as ‘Find all references’ and so on. Luckily I’m only using it for this example. So lets not focus on that but on the tip this post is about ;)

Patches available for scrolling context menu in Visual Studio 2010

Rick van den Bosch — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:57:43 GMT

The past couple of days I’ve been experiencing some issues with the context menu for my Solution Explorer in Visual Studio 2010. It contained scrollbars even when there was sufficient space on the screen to show the menu without scrolling.

Searching for that issue I immediately found this blog post on The Visual Studio Blog. Taken from that post:

We’re pleased to announce that there are patches available for Visual Studio and Windows Presentation Foundation that fix this problem. You will need to install both patches to fix this issue

Visual Studio 2010 patch: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2345133

Windows Presentation Foundation 4.0 patch: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2413613

X86: NDP40-KB2413613-x86.exe.

X64: NDP40-KB2413613-x64.exe.

I installed both patches and find Visual Studio no longer shows scrollbars in my context menu when I don’t need ‘em. Next to that I am now able to scroll through the menu (when using scrollbars) by using the mousewheel. I think this didn’t work before the patches, but I can’t test my ‘before’ situation anymore…

Hope this helps.

HowTo: have Visual Studio open XAML documents in code view

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 09:25:18 GMT

Just a small post to start the new year... and let it be a good one!

When opening a XAML document in Visual Studio, it opens in split view by default. This might become annoying when you have a large XAML document, because all the content needs to be rendered before you can get some work done.

Here’s how you can have Visual Studio open XAML documents in code view:

Go to Tools, Options
Under Text Editor open the XAML section and select Miscellaneous
Under Default View check the Always open documents in full XAML view box (see image below)
Click OK to apply and you’re all done!

Hope this helps.

Visual Studio: Zero-impact Projects & Cutting/copying empty lines

Rick van den Bosch — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:07:00 GMT

Yesterday I remembered two Visual Studio options Sara Ford told about in a presentation of her I attended a while back. Changing them made me happy... :)

Zero-impact projects
When I have to test something real quick, I tend to create a new project in Visual Studio and scribble some code to test whatever I want to test at that point. This causes my project directory to be filled with projects named 'WindowsFormsApplication14' or something like that. To make this stop, go to Tools - Options - Projects and Solutions - General. Uncheck the option 'Save new projects when created'. This way those newly made (and shortly used) projects aren't saved untill you explicitly tell Visual Studio to do so. No more 'WindowsFormsApplication63' for you! Unless you want to name it that way intentionally, of course...

Cutting/copying empty lines
We probably all experienced this at one time or another: you select some code, copy it, go to an empty line where you want to past the code.......and you press CTRL + C by accident. With the default settings, you just copied an empty line and have lost the stuff you copied earlier. But with this next option, empty lines won't get copied or cut anymore! Go to Tools - Options - Text Editor - All languages (or just the language you want to change this setting for) and deselect the option 'Apply Cut or Copy commands to blank lines when there is no selection'.

Visual Studio 2010: Close all documents

Rick van den Bosch — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:31:00 GMT

Sometimes it’s the little things that make you love a new product just a bit more.

I tend to close stuff I don’t use anymore fairly quickly. Sometimes I even close an Explorer window or an application right after I used it, only to find I need it again in a few moments… We all have our quirks, right ;)

While developing I regularly close all the documents I have open in Visual Studio, especially when I am done with a specific task. And most of the time, I like to collapse all the projects and their subfolders too to keep a tidy work environment. I also have the option ‘Track Active Item in Solution Explorer’ checked under ‘Tools’ - ‘Options’ - ‘Projects and solutions’ – ‘General’. Of course I have, I’d almost add…

In older versions of Visual Studio (while having the ‘Track Active Item in Solution Explorer’ option turned on) choosing the ‘Close all documents’ item in the ‘Windows’ menu after having collapsed all the projects lead to one project opening up again. That was the project with the document that was active just before closing all the documents. The ‘Track Active Item in Solution Explorer’ option seemed to squeeze in a ‘Look at that guy!’ just before all the documents actually closed, making Visual Studio open up the project and highlighting the file again. Although I knew this happened, I somehow kept to my usual routine of collapsing all the projects and their subfolders before closing all documents, with the same result each time: me closing that one project (or those seven subfolders) twice.

But…… no more in Visual Studio 2010! This newly built IDE seems to understand my way of work: no longer does Visual Studio (or the ‘Track Active Item in Solution Explorer option) open up the project of an active item when I choose ‘Close All Documents’. I’m not even sure if this was a specific choice or just a coincidental side-effect of the new IDE, but it makes me love Visual Studio 2010 just a bit more… :)

Visual Studio 2010 and the web.config

Rick van den Bosch — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 08:00:00 GMT

While working with Visual Studio 2010, a new feature caught my eye that isn't communicated (strongly) in the "What's new" lists you can find online. As part of the Visual Studio 2010 supports multiple web.config files! Now we can create a separate web.config file for each configuration we have for our application. If you add a configuration through the configuration manager, you have the possibility to add a web.config file for the new configuration too.

A web application gets two configurations by default: a Debug and a Release configuration. When opening the plus sign in front of the web.config file, two extra files appear: web.debug.config and web.release.config. Depending on the active configuration, Visual Stusio selects the correct version.

The web.config file contains the default configuration. Configuration specific config files may add or remove settings or change current ones. This is done using simple transformation tags.

For more information on transformations have a look at:

Web Deployment: Web.Config Transformation (Visual Web Developer Team Blog)
Web.config Transformation Syntax for Web Application Project Deployment (MSDN library)