I am working with visual studio 2012, and my problem occurs in a large, old winforms application solution when I try to compile the whole application (dozens of projects).
When I get the latest code from source control (Team Foundation Server) for the first time, and build the solution, it builds just fine the first time. Then, if I make any changes, a later Build/Rebuild, will sometimes (not always) result in lots of projects in the solution throwing the following error for some of its resx files.
Unable to create a manifest resource name for "Contracts\Templates\ContractTemplateDb.resx". Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Windows\system32\Contracts\Templates\ContractTemplateDb.vb'
OR
Invalid Resx file. Could not find a part of the path 'C:\Windows\system32\NeptuneForms\HelpForm.resx'.
The problem is that there is no reason it should be looking in C:\Windows\system32 for these files, as they exist fine (and did during the last build) in the local directory of the project! The random directory is not always C:\Windows\system32, sometimes it is a random directory of another project, or even in another branch.
This happens sporadically to some of our developers, frequently to others, and almost always to me, and it seems unrelated to the code we are writing, because when it happened, I rolled back all the changes we had made since it started happening, and it still happened.
There are two things I've tried, that had no success.
Recreate the entire solution, and remove and readd all resource files as though they never existed before.
Install all windows updates and get the latest updates to Visual Studio 2012
Nothing has helped, and I am at a loss. My next step is to upgrade to 2013 and hope for the best, but I'm afraid thats not going to help either.
Does anyone have any similar experience, or any ideas of other things to try? I'm pulling my hair out over this one...
Related
I made some changes to a VB.Net website project in Visual Studio 2019, and then I merged them into the UAT project in TFS, so that they can be published to our UAT site. When I try to build the project the Error List contains one item stating:
Maximum number of errors has been exceeded.
When I look at the Output tab I can see a long list of errors, but when I investigate them they are not errors at all. Some of the messages indicate syntax errors, but when I view the code nothing is highlighted and it all looks fine. Some of them say that a variable has not been declared, but it has. I also get Character is not valid errors - but again nothing is highlighted.
I should say that none of these errors is in any of the files I have been working on so they should be the same as the code which works fine on the UAT site. I already tried deleting the .vs folder and removing related folders from the Temporary ASP.Net Files folder, which fixed some issues I was having earlier, but not these errors.
I don't want to rant, but I feel like if Microsoft had a better testing regime there would be less of these sorts of issues and developers wouldn't need to waste so much time trying to work around their mistakes. I'm completely stuck at the moment so any suggestions would be gratefully received.
I wish I could say I know how to fix this but I don't. All I know is after a mixture of visual studio restarts, failed publishes, and a couple of fixed references the project now compiles and even publishes.
That would've been a lot easier and less stressful if visual studio provided more accurate error messages
I have a solution written in VB with some C# components. The solution uses some libraries from 2 outside sources. I have been working on this project for several months without issue. I cannot identify anything specific that I did to change my system or configuration. I was just working through the code, transitioning from an old set of library calls to the new library calls. The new library calls require complete rewrite so I change sections of the code and test to that point. Visual Studio 2013 debugger as of Friday morning will no longer recognize or show my local variables in this solution. The only things that appear in the Locals window are under Me. The code does work and I have it writing out to a text log file to confirm the values of variables at certain points, but the debugger has gone blind. When I add any of these local variables to Watch the response is " is not declared. It may be inaccessible due to its protection level."
Steps I've taken so far with no permanent success:
looked online and tried the few matches I found with no success
deleted the bin and obj folders and had the solution rebuild with no
success
recreated solution from scratch, copied over base files and rebuilt
solution and project (which worked for a few hours), until I did a
rebuild project and problem appeared again
updated to pack 5 and no success
I have opened my older projects and checked them. The debugger runs just fine and shows the variables. It is obviously something that happens during the rebuild process.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Update:
Let me try to explain a little more clearly the situation.
I have an application I have built and am selling to some customers. Version 1 is installed and running at several locations. It is written in VB and uses some older COM libraries for a particular integration process.
The vendor is retiring the COM libraries. Their new libraries are in C#.
I created a new copy of my entire application (solution) and imported the new C# libraries. I have been going through and replacing the old code with the code for the new calls.I recompiled the solution and everything ran fine in debug.
The objects used with the new calls are completely different and there is limited documentation so I update a section of code and test to that point. Each time I "Save all Files", rebuild the project and test the changes. Everything worked fine for a few days. On Friday morning I started working on more changes and got an odd error. The system was not getting a proper value for a certain variable. When I went to check it in the WATCH window, debugger said it could not evaluate it. I figured something was hung up so I shut everything down and rebooted my machine. When I tried it again later, the same problem.
After several hours of no success I exited VS, renamed the folder to "OLD" and recreated the solution from the older version. Immediately everything was looking fine. I started making the changes and testing. Each time I did a rebuild, everything looked fine until the last change. Here I am again.
The code works fine up to the point I have updated. The only issue is that the debugger windows are not working correctly. If a variable is declared at the Class level outside the Sub, they can be seen. The only variables the debugger is blind to are the local variables within the running Sub.
I looked for anyone else with this issue and only found a few items. I tried the suggestions but no joy. I am left with having to temporarily define the variables outside the sub so I can see them while debugging.
I am on VS 2013 Update 5.
Do I need to move to VS 2015 to get around this?
Thanks again for your time and assistance.
I am assuming that you haven't changed versions of visual studio since the last time a rebuild worked for you.
recreated solution from scratch, copied over base files and rebuilt solution and project (which worked for a few hours), until I did a rebuild project and problem appeared again
Based on this, you create it from scratch and everything works until you do the rebuild right? But you are copying the base files still and you have new library calls since the last time a rebuild didn't mess up the locals window. So one of those is almost assuredly the culprit.
Since the library calls seem to be the thing that changed based on your post start there. If you go back to the old code and do a rebuild does it fix it? Assuming so, put the library calls back one at a time until it breaks.
If going back to the old code doesn't fix it, create from scratch with the old code and copy over the base files and rebuild. If that fixes it, add new library calls one at a time and rebuild after each until it breaks.
If that doesn't fix it either, then you will need to dig deeper on what else might have changed.
You are copying base files so eliminate those as the problem if you can:
Are you able to use placeholders instead of the base files or something that won't necessarily work as a finished product but that will allow you to debug, rebuild, debug again to see if the problem is related to one of them? Check the dates on the base files and ensure that they haven't changed since the last time a rebuild worked.
Something you could do concurrently could be to have have a colleague do a rebuild on their machine and see if the same issue comes up for them. It would (almost) completely eliminate the possibility that it is a configuration / program corruption issue on yours. Alternately, there are some free vb.net compilers online that you can upload files and code to. I'm not sure if that would be practical for you (due to the components of your program and/or sensitivity of the data) or not and haven't ever tried any where there is C# code in there but I wouldn't think that would be an issue.
I'm kind of new to Visual Studio. I've built a few simple programs in it, but now I'm in the process of rewriting a huge system I wrote in VBA. What is frustrating me is the Error List in VS is only listing errors for one .vb File in my project, lets call that VBFile1. Now, when I work on another vb File, VBFile2, which is in the same project as VBFile1 no red squiggles or errors are listed for VBFile2. I don't understand how this could happen. This is what I've tried/checked:
Filter is set to 'Current Project' and I played around with the other Filter settings but no change.
Checked the Text Editor under Options and according to the research that I've already done it is fine. Plus, I have never changed any of these settings anyway.
Closed and re-opened Visual Studio.
Closed all open files in the Project and still displays the same error list
Close all files except the VBFile2 but still shows the same error list of VBFile1.
I have Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate. I feel like this should be an easy fix...I just am really confused what's going on.
Hope this makes sense!
UPDATE: Excluded from project, VBFile1 and finally errors are listed for VBFile2...why would this be?
I am not sure if it has been fixed in Visual Studio 2012, but there is a Connect Request for Visual Studio 2010 with a resolution of won't fix because of performance issues. The effect your are seeing is because you have exceeded the maximum number of errors for that project (what I am used to seeing is 102 as the threshold), it will not show you anymore till you fix the ones that it has already shown you.
According to this MSDN article, which I found through this SO question the limitation is still there for the IDE but has been removed for the command line compiler.
From above MSDN Link:
Limitless (Command-line) Errors!
This is actually a good thing, let me explain. For performance reasons, the Visual Basic IDE maxes out at 101 errors (with error #102 being “Maximum number of errors exceeded.”) This can make it difficult to estimate the amount of work remaining in certain situations, particularly in upgrade scenarios. We have removed this limit from the command-line compiler in this release, though it still there in the IDE. What this means is if you want to know exactly how many errors there are for a project, just invoke the compiler through msbuild.exe or vbc.exe and you’ll get your answer.
I'm seeing a strange build bug a lot. Sometimes after typing some code we receive the following build error.
Class 'clsX' must implement 'Event PropertyChanged(sender As Object, e As PropertyChangedEventArgs)' for interface System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged'.
And
'PropertyChanged' cannot implement 'PropertyChanged' because there is no matching event on interface 'System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged'.
Those error should never go together! Usually we can just ignore the exception and build the solution but often enough this bug stops our build. (this happens a lot using Edit and Continue which is annoying)
We're using Vb.net and c# mixed in one big solution.
Removing the PropertyChanged event and retyping the same code! sometimes fixes this.
Question:
Has anyone else seen this problem and has some suggestions how to prevent his?
We're using a code generator that causes this error to surface but just editing some files manually triggers this exception too. This error occur's on multiple machines using various setups.
Someone had the same exact issue discussed here. It sounds like there is an issue with this build picking up an old version of a binary. I would try the following in order:
Verify all assembly references use project references where possible within the Visual Studio solution.
Disable build parallelization in case there is some weird file locking issue with concurrent project builds. Go to Tools -> Options, Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run, then set "maximum number of parrellel project builds" to 1. Not the best solution but it may help narrow down the problem.
Disable the Hosting Process in case it's locking some file causing an assembly to not get rebuilt correctly. For C# project go to Project Properties, Debug tab, and uncheck "Enable the Visual Studio hosting process". For VB.NET project you'll need to Unload Project, Edit the project file, and add <UseVSHostingProcess>false</UseVSHostingProcess> to the PropertyGroup of each configuration. Again, not the best solution but you probably won't notice a difference.
Lastly, try doing a Clean + Build to try and resolve the issue when it occurs (I know this is not a fix but it's easy enough to do), also Rebuild may be slightly different than Clean + Build so try the latter if the former doesn't work.
As I can not comment due to lack of appropriate points.
But I would like to share one of my experience:
In an aspx.cs page I was working, used to compile fine and some time gave mysterious error of a variable not defined or function not defined or sometime variable or the function defined two times. I changed possibly each and every variable and function name but there seemed no effect , but after entering a simple space or a new line at any place in the file used to solve the compile error. At one time I tried to save the file (in a different encoding as i am used to experiments) and found that the file was not saving in the correct encoding (i.e. the ansi encoding because the file had a unicode character ), I removed the unicode character and that compile error didn't bothered me again.
This unicode character problem could be (not a hard and fast rule) there so you could check it.
Nuke & restore using source control (TFS instructions here):
Make sure you have everything checked in
Exit Visual Studio
Rename the project directory to .Bak (effectively deleting it)
Reopen Visual Studio and in source control:
Get Specific Version
check 'Overwrite... not checked out' and 'Overwrite ... even if local version matches'
Re-open project
Another problem: Make sure some source files are not newer than the current date (or your date is set back). Often this happens in apps where you are doing logic that requires certain things to happen differently on certain dates. You change your clock to test it, make a revision to the source with the date advanced, set the date back, and viola, rebuild does not rebuild that file.
You say 'typing it in again' - can you try just saving? After 40 years since MULTIX the .net build still decides what has changed by checking the file timestamp.
good luck!
When you get the error, is it always on the VB calling C# side, or vice-versa, or does it work both ways?
If the answer is either of the first two situations, try building the "callee" project within the solution before building the "caller" project to see if it stops the situation.
Also, just in case it may jog something for you to think about, does this error crop up when you change a VB file or a C# file, or is there no correllation?
Oh, and sorry this looks like an answer instead of a comment, I cannot post comments yet (need 50 rep).
I have a VS 2008 VB.NET Solution, which is quite large. Every once in a while, if I take latest code from source control, I get hundreds of errors. These aren't real errors. They are all about classes not implementing functions/events from interfaces (which they DO implement).
"Class [class name] must implement [event or function name] for interface [interface name]"
I usually end up spending couple of hours doing a combination of: building/rebuilding the solution project by project, cleaning the solution, deleting everything locally, taking latest... etc. At some point, everything just magically builds. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this? Other people on my team experience this as well. I do not see any circular references.
Yes, I've been there.
The root of the problem is that some projects are trying to build and they are dependent on the dll's that other projects generate.
You can solve this by modifying the build order of your projects.
Once you do this, everything should work fine on the first build attempt after check out.
I've seen it as well.
I think it's related to some of the metadata/files Visual studio keeps around..my running theory is that VS isn't refreshing it's internal stuff when you do the latest pull from source control. Thus it tries to do a build, it thinks some files haven't been "updated" (thus it has an old intermediate object file lying around it uses instead) gets confused, and fails.
Generally doing a combination of Build->Clean Solution, Build->Build Solution solves it most of the time. I have, twice, had to blow away the entire build directory and pull a fresh copy from source control (Clearcase) and do a fresh build.
Edit: I have Clearcase integrated with VS2008, and do my checkouts/checkins/version history from within VS2008. Not sure if using the standalone windows tool would solve this issue, and haven't the time to test (not to mention being unable to reproduce the error consistantly)
Edit2: When i say twice, i mean twice in the last 12 months or so.