I am having deployment issue with AjaxControlToolKit.dll. I copied the DLL to my local bin dir, and it works fine. But when I do the build on test server, the files are not in Visual Source Safe anywhere, so the site doesn't work. What could be the issue?.
Thank you..
You can either check in the AjaxControlToolkit assembly and any dependencies it has, or you can install it (if there is an installer) on your build and test machines. Checking it in is preferred in most cases as it makes it obvious that you have this dependency. Rather than putting it in your .\Bin folder, make a .\References (or similarly named) folder and put it there along with any other binary references you have. Then, you can add a reference at that location and set it to "Copy Local".
Related
So I have an ASP.NET VB website that references several other projects (their DLLS are just put in the site's bin folder). I need to update a small piece of code in one of the projects, which I have done and it builds fine. However, when I copy over the new DLL to the website's bin folder it fails to build, and all the Imports statements say "BC40056: Namespace or type specified in the Imports xxx doesn't contain any public member or cannot be found", which results in a ton of errors like "is not defined" . There is no reference to the updated DLL in the website project's properties, but if I put the old version back it's all fine.
The project was copied from a server and the vbproj file contained references to other DLLs, but the HintPaths were a mixture of mapped drives and ..\..\..\. I've updated these so that they're all the full server location path, but this has made no difference. I tried adding the project to the same solution as the website and added a reference to the project instead, but this also made no difference.
I've done plenty of Googling but have yet to find a solution. Any help would be very welcome!
A few things
You don't want to just "place" the .dll's in the bin folder. One big reason is that when you do a "clean" project, the bin folder is deleted. So, anytime you do a clean project, what is in the bin folder is cleaned out. And a developer will often do a clean project if some kind of problem is occuring.
I would place those files in some folder in the project. (create a folder, or if its only one or two .dll's, then place them in the root of the project). At compile time, the .dll's will be copied to the bin folder. And if you using web deployment, then you can choose to have the .dll's all combined into one .dll. So, once again, you can see it makes little sense to place the .dll's in the bin folder, since during a build, they will not be required, and as noted, the resulting bin folder can and will as a "regular" development process be re-created (emptied out). I seen a good number of projects in which the developer did place the .dll in the bin folder (because they did not know where else to place the .dll's, and that was seemly the only place that the application worked. But, during a web build + deployment to the production server, those .dll's can be left behind - they not be copied to the final "deployment" build. (I'm basic saying don't do this!!).
You can also consider just creating folder called "packages" in the root. This is where all the nuget packages are placed. So, some folder for those .dll's is the idea here.
The other big issue? Well, just dropping some .dll's in some place does NOT give you the developer all the methods and properties of those .dll's when writing code (we are assuming these are managed code - not win x32 .dll's).
So, without adding a reference to that assembly, then I can't see how the project will even compile correctly, and how syntax checking, and general use of the assembly will ever work during the development process (so VERY perplexed that you don't have references to those .dll's - that as a general rule can't work).
Now, to use the assemblies? Yes, you want to add the .dll as a reference to the project.
So, in references, add the .dll as a reference.
And then in the property sheet for the refence? Make sure you have the "copy local" set = true.
eg this:
So, above is GhostScript.net reference. (a open source library to manipulate pdf's).
Note the long path name for the .dll location. But, MOST important is the copy local setting = true. This means during a compile and build (which as noted can clean out the bin folder), then the .dll will be output to the final build in the bin folder.
So, I can't see how you can compile anything without an actual reference to the .dll. That is quite much assumed and a given - else I see no way how your project can compile under any circumstances.
So, referance the .dll, and that should allow use of the class(s) and objects, and enable your code to compile. And make sure the copy local = true, as that is the process that will copy + place the .dll in the final output (bin) folder when you compile.
So it turns out that the project for the DLL I was trying to reference had the Target CPU set to x64. Changing this this to 'AnyCPU' then allowed me to reference it.
This post gave me the answer: Could not load file or assembly ... An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format (System.BadImageFormatException)
I noticed today that whenever I build a word add in project of mine, Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll is being copied into the bin folder and is subsequently included when publishing.
Is there an easy way to see why this (annoyingly large) dll is being included when publishing?
It isn't referenced directly. There are 3 dependencies in the project page and I've checked all these projects and none of them reference it directly either. Do I need to continue following the dependencies of those projects too?
Is there not some kind of log file for a build that could give me a hint?
EDIT:
The problem was that my project referenced a project that referenced a project that had a reference to Microsoft.SharePoint.dll with copy local set to true. I had to delete the dlls from all projects and rebuild with copy local set to false. I didnt realise that the 3rd party dll would be copied into my project.
If this is being pulled in due to a dependency from another DLL, then try looking at all of your DLLs in Dependency Walker. It finds all of the dependecies that a dll has. This is usually only when they are actually being used/bound, but you can also use the Fusion Log Viewer to see where all DLL binds are being bound from.
You could have a a look at reflection mechanism of asp.net or if not you could run trace using firebug for cross reference on browser ,
We're in the middle of changing from VSS to Subversion and we have a website project on our Subversion Repo. We've removed the Bin folder as it causes all kinds of chaotic tree conflicts since our development solution contains some Class Library projects the Website project depends on (set up as project references in our solution). We also have a couple of 3rd party library DLLs in the Website's Bin folder too.
The next phase of our project involves a designer modifying themes to our website. I'd like for him to be able to just open the Website project in VS 2005, modify the CSS files he needs to on his working copy, and test his files on his localhost. He'll need the most up-to-date DLL files for him to be able to do this.
Is there anyway to add the Bin folder DLLs to subversion, and configure TortoiseSVN or subversion so that we can commit our newest DLLs (project dependencies in developer's solution files) but ignore them on update (per client I guess)? It would also be handy to have our 3rd party website dependencies on Subversion too.
You should not put 3rd-party assemblies into the bin folder. In fact, you should assume that the bin folder will be emptied before each build. It is a place to put the output from a build, not a place to put inputs.
Put these binaries in to some other folder, maybe "3rdPartyAssemblies". Use a file reference to these files, and they'll be copied into the bin folder, as outputs.
Would it not be possible to structure it like this:
Trunk/
WebApp/
ClassLibrary1/
ClassLibrary2/
ClassLibrary3/
3rdPartyDlls/
build.bat
The web app is what pulls all the class libraries and the 3rd party dlls in to the WebApp's Bin folder (All of these will be referenced via relative links). You can then setup TortoiseSvn to call the build.bat file on update through client side hooks. You would also setup IIS on the designer's machine to point to the WebApp directory.
As other users have pointed out, you could use svn externals to pull in those enterprise wide class libraries.
What most everybody else has said regarding '3rdParty' is correct.
You may also consider svn:externals to pull in related directories including a '3rdParty' assemblies directory, or even output directories from builds that can be triggered by a check in to assure currency.
The approach we've taken is, rather than having the Libraries in the same solution, they have separate solutions and we (well, our Build server) compiles them and checks the compiled DLLs into sourcecontrol under "Dependencies" which is always mapped to C:\Dependencies on all developers machines. We then use file references to this folder from the website project.
Thi way you can give your designer the Website project along with a copy of C:\Dependencies and they'll be none-the-wiser =)
We don't sourcecontrol the bin-folder since it would be updated everytime you run a compile. Instead, we keep references to 3rd part libs in a separete folder that is under version control, that we have references to in our project.
With this setup and using "copy local = true", they are automatically added into bin upon compilation.
Secondly, we will only commit new binary files when we update the 3rd-part binaries.
This approach is also possible to do for your internal dlls, so that your designer can just compile his visual-studio-solution so taht any relevant dlls would be put into his bin-folder and hence, create a functional site locally on his machine.
I've just started using Subversion with ASP.NET web applications via the VisualSVN IDE plugin. There are a bunch of files which Visual Studio automatically generates so I don't want to version control these since they're not really part of the codebase and not required to build.
Does anyone have a definitive list of the main files that should be ignored when commiting to Subversion from an ASP.NET Web Application? and how would I go about ignoring these files. If possible I'd like to set it globally so that I don't have to keep doing the same thing for every ASP.NET Web Application that I write and create a new repository for.
Answers
A list of files to ignore as submitted in the answers below,
bin
obj
*.exe
*.pdb
*.suo
_ReSharper.*
*.user
General concensus seems to be that these should be ignored on a per project basis at the creation of the repository. They will then be ignored by all users using the repository.
Not really 'definitive', but I always ignore .suo and .user files and the bin/ and obj/ directories
Here's my ignore list from TortoiseSVN. VisualSVN requires TortoiseSVN and uses its settings.
bin obj *.exe *.pdb *.suo _ReSharper.* *.user
I haven't committed any unwanted (or not committed any wanted) files with this setting.
If you have any WCF service references then you only need to include the files Reference.cs and Reference.svcmap for each service reference.
The AnkhSVN plugin for Visual Studio has a list of files to ignore automatically and will only commits the files needed.
At least that's how I find it. It's taken me a few attempts at setting up the repository correctly but with AnkhSVN only commits a subset of he files that TortoiseSVn wants to commit. If ignores files recompiled on every Build for example.
Depending on your situation, you might want to keep the Web.config out of revision control as well. Different developers might require different configuration files for a website.
I'd recommend setting up a separate directory in your repository with a reference configuration file for the website and ignoring *.config on the actual project directory.
Additionally, to cover case sensitivity issues with "bin", I had to add [Bb]in to mine. So I have:
[Bb]in obj *.exe *.pdb *.suo _ReSharper.* *.user
Also, this link explains how to handle project specific excludes as well so that others get the same exclusion behavior only for the same project when they check it out:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s02.html
I used the svn:ignore property on a particular directory to exclude a certain set of files that were copied into there (but I still wanted the directory itself in svn).
Use VisualSVN to do the initial "Add files to repository" and it automagically ignores the stuff you don't want-such as suo files and the bin/obj folders.
As part of improvements to our build process, we are currently debating whether we should have separate project/solution files on our CI production environment from our local development environments.
The reason this has come about is because of reference problems we experienced in our previous project. On a frequent basis people would mistakenly add a reference to an assembly in the wrong location, which would mean it would work okay on their local environment, but might break on someone else's or on the build machine.
Also, the reference paths are in the csproj.user files which means these must be committed to source control, so everyone has to share these same settings.
So we are thinking about having separate projects and solutions on our CI server, so that when we do a build it uses these projects rather than local development ones.
It has obvious drawbacks such as an overhead to maintaining these separate files and the associated process that would need to be defined and followed, but it has benefits in that we would be in more control over EXACTLY what happens in the production environment.
What I haven't been able to find is anything on this subject - can't believe we are the only people to think about this - so all thoughts are welcome.
I know it's anachronistic. But the single best way I've found to handle the references issue is to have a folder mapped to a drive letter such as R: and then all projects build into or copy output into that folder also. Then all references are R:\SomeFile.dll etc. This gets you around the problem that sometimes references are added by absolute path and sometimes they are added relatively. (there's something to do with "HintPath" which I can't really remember)
The nice thing then, is that you can still use the same solution files on your build server. Which to be honest is an absolute must as you lose the certainty that what is being built on the dev machine is the same as on the build server otherwise.
In our largest project (a system comprising of many applications) we have the following structure
/3rdPartyAssemblies /App1 /App2 /App3 /.....
All external assemblies are added to 3rdPartyAssemblies/Vendor/Version/...
We have a CoreBuild.sln file which acts as an MSBuild script for all of the assemblies that are shared to ensure building in dependancy order (ie, make sure App1.Interfaces is built before App2 as App2 has a reference to App1.Interfaces).
All inter-application references target the /bin folder (we don't use bin/debug and bin/release, just bin, this way the references remain the same and we just change the release configuration depending on the build target).
Cruise Control builds the core solution for any dependencies before building any other app, and because the 3rdPartAssemblies folder is present on the server we ensure developer machines and build server have the same development layout.
Usually, you would be creating Build projects/scripts in some form or another for your Production, and so putting together another Solution file doesn't come in the picture.
It would be easier to train everyone to use project references, and create a directory under the project file structure for external assembly references. This way everyone follows the same environment.
We have changed our project structure (making use of SVN Externals) where each project is now completely self-contained. That is, any references never go outwith the project directory (for example, if Project A references ASM X, then ASM X exists within a subfolder of ProjectA)
I suspect that this should go some way towards helping solve some of our problems, but I can still see some advantages of having more control over the build projects.
#David - believe it or not this is what we actually have just now, and yet it's still causing us problems!
We're making some changes though, which are forced upon us due to moving to TeamCity and multiple build agents - so we can't have references to directories outwith the current project, as I've mentioned in my previous answer.
Look at the Externals section of this link to see what I mean - http://www.dummzeuch.de/delphi/subversion/english.html
I would strongly recommend against this.
Reference paths aren't only stored in the .user file. A hint path is stored in the project file itself. You should never have to check a .user file into source control.
Let there be one set of (okay, possibly versioned) solution/project files which all developers use, and the Release configurations of which are what you're ultimately building in production. Having separate project files is going to cause confusion down the road, when some project setting is tweaked, not carried across, and slipped into production.
You might also check this out:
http://www.objectsharp.com/cs/blogs/barry/archive/2004/10/29/988.aspx
http://bytes.com/forum/thread268546.html