Visual Studio not automatically building application on pressing F5 key

Recently I was facing one issue with Visual Studio 2010. When I change some code in Visual Studio 2010 and hit F5, it is not building application and running old compiled version. Every time I want to debug an application, I have to first manually build application and then hit F5  key to debug my application. Usually visual studio automatically builds application on hitting F5 key.

I found interesting solutions from internet to resolve this issue. You need to open the Configuration Manager from Debug Dropdown or right click on Solution and open Configuration Manager Window. Now click on Build Checkbox.

Another solution would be useful if your Project is out of date or you have installed newer version. Go to Tool -> Option -> Project and Solutions -> Build and Run from Visual Studio. Now select “Always build” or “Prompt to build” option of “On Run, when project are out of date”.

Hope this small Tip might help you to fix this issue.

See Also –

How to create/modify configurations in Visual Studio? 

How to use Pre-build/Post -build events in Visual Studio?

How to suppress compiler generated warnings in Visual Studio? 

How to use Pre-build and Post-build Events in Visual Studio?

Many of you might aware about Build Events feature of Visual Studio. In this post i will explain little bit about Pre-build and Post-build events and their usage.

Sometimes you might need to execute some additional tasks just before and after building your Visual Studio solution. So for this Visual Studio provides nice way to do that using Build Events. You can specify commands inside pre-build and post-build command line. You can find build events tab inside project properties.

As mentioned in above image, you can specify almost all DOS commands inside pre-build and post-build event as per your requirement. Post-build event gives you more control over Pre-build command line execution. You can decide when to execute post-build event from given three options displayed in above image.

Let’s try to understand with simple example.

On successful build I want to copy my executable to some specific folder on my local drive. So in above example I have used xcopy command to copy files from one directory to another. In above example I have used ‘$(ProjectDir)’ macro which will gives me the current project directory. There are more macros available to use for various purposes see below image. These macros can be used to specify location of project or solution, project name, extension, output directory, configuration name etc.

You can use this feature in many scenarios like processing or executing batch file, copy assemblies to specific location, generate resources file using tool like resgen.exe etc. This is really nice and useful feature provided by visual studio.

Hope you liked this small tip. Please leave your feedback in comments section.

See Also – 

How to suppress compiler generated warnings in Visual Studio?

How to get IP address and host name of machine?

How to use Partial Methods in C#?

How to modify/create build configurations in Visual Studio?

In project life cycle you might need to create or access various builds like Development, Testing, User Acceptance Testing, Production etc. Visual Studio provides Configuration Manager Toolbar to change, create or access builds. By default solution has two builds Debug and Release.

Typically debug build is used to debug and detect errors (compile-time and runtime) from solution or project. Once project or solution development is complete and ready to deploy than project or solution should be built in Release mode. Release builds enables code optimization and enables fast execution of program.

You can also change or create new configuration using configuration dropdown available on standard toolbar.

For add or change configuration you can select configuration manager from any of the drop down. If sometimes configuration or platform drop downs are not visible on standard tool bar of visual studio in such case you can add those externally by clicking on customize menu item of tools menu.

The Configuration Manager Dialog will appear.

Similarly you can open Configuration Manager Dialog from right click of your solution and click on Configuration Manager (below image).

You can change or edit configuration and platform for each project under solution.

The same configuration used to develop application to choose correct config file or connection string or other configuration specific task. Let’s have a look on below code.

#if DEV

        Console.WriteLine("DEV Configuration...");

#elif QA

        Console.WriteLine("QA Configuration...");

#endif

As per above code, based on selected configuration either DEV or QA the appropriate code will execute. One more thing, by default Debug and Release configuration added with project and during compilation it will create Debug and Release folder under Bin folder located at solution folder. If we added new configurations in our case DEV and QA then respective folder will get created under solution’s Bin folder and respective resource and assembly will be added to that.

See Also - 
How to create/modify build configuration in Visual Studio?
Performance counters in Dotnet (C#)?
How to get Call Stack programmatically?
How to Ping machine using C#?
How to create custom Application Domain?

How to build Solution or Project from command line (Batch File)?

Sometimes you might need to build multiple solutions or complex project in particular sequence. In such case you can build your project or solutions using command line or batch file. In this post I will explain simple way to build project or solution using command line tool or creating batch file.

Devenv allows you to build your solution or project using command line. It also allows related multiple operations such as clean solution, rebuild solution or deploy solution etc. To execute commands, you need to open Visual Studio command prompt available inside visual studio tools under all programs of start menu. You can find multiple options available with devenv using below command.

Devenv /?

Let’s start with simple example which builds solution using command prompt.

Devenv  TestConsoleApplication.sln /Build Debug

The above command builds TestConsoleApplication solution in Debug configuration mode. To build this solution with Release mode you just need to write Release instead of Debug in above code.

Similarly you can clean and rebuild solution using below code.

Devenv  TestConsoleApplication.sln /Clean

Devenv  TestConsoleApplication.sln /Rebuild Debug

We can also build specific project with project build configuration along with solution.

Devenv  TestConsoleApplication.sln /Build Debug /Project TestConsoleApplication/TestConsoleApplication.csproj /ProjectConfig Debug

Below command opens solution from command prompt and runs the application. If any exception occurred while running application it will log the same in MyErrorLog.txt file.

Devenv /Run TestConsoleApplication.sln /out D:/Temp/MyErrorLog.txt

The above command runs the application and log exception if any into separate file mentioned with /out switch.

We can also reset Visual Studio’s setting using below line of code. This is nice and great feature which can be useful when something is missing from IDE or IDE is not working property. This will restore back all the default settings of Visual Studio’s IDE.

Devenv /ResetSettings

MSBuild.exe

For build related task, it is recommended by Microsoft to use Msbuild.exe. Msbuild.exe builds project or solution with specified options. You can find multiple options using below help command.

msbuild.exe /?

To build solution using msbuild you can use below line of code.

MSBuild TestConsoleApplication.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=”Any CPU”

You can also perform multiple task like Rebuild, Clean etc using MsBuild.

You can also create batch file to build your application. Below is the sample code of batch file to build your application using devenv.

BuildSolution.Bat

@Echo OFF

Echo "Building solution/project file using batch file"

SET PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\

SET SolutionPath=d:\Temp\TestConsoleApplication\TestConsoleApplication.sln

Echo Start Time - %Time%

Call Devenv %SolutionPath% /Build Debug

Echo End Time - %Time%

Set /p Wait=Build Process Completed...

You can also create batch file to build solution using MSBuild.exe file similar above mentioned batch file with just little change.

BuildSolution.Bat
@Echo OFF

Echo "Building solution/project file using batch file"

SET PATH=C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\

SET SolutionPath=d:\Temp\TestConsoleApplication\TestConsoleApplication.sln

Echo Start Time - %Time%

MSbuild %SolutionPath% /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform="Any CPU"

Echo End Time - %Time%

Set /p Wait=Build Process Completed...

See Also - 

How to get IPAddress and Host name of Machine?

How to get System Hardware Information?

How to suppress compiler generated warnings in Visual Studio?