LESS syntax highlighting and intellisense stopped working in VS2012 - visual-studio-2012

I'm running Visual Studio 2012.3 update.
Today when I started IDE and opened a LESS file, syntax highlighting didn't work. Nor did intellisense while editing it.
It seems that Web Essentials is working as CSS preview pane is displayed and code in it is syntax highlighted. And I can also set Web Essentials' properties in Options and they do apply.
What's wrong? Anybody experiencing the same issue?

LESS was moved into the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 which you can read about and download here: http://www.asp.net/aspnet/overview/aspnet-45/aspnet-and-web-tools-20122-release-notes
It is unclear why Web Essentials continues to say it features LESS. The changelog states that the LESS editor was dropped in 2.5. This is the only place that I could find that mentions the move: http://madskristensen.net/post/Web-Tools-20122-and-Web-Essentials.aspx

Related

Visual Studio regularly freezes running Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe

Background
I maintain several web sites that are Visual Studio "Web Site Projects".
Problem
I've found that with a couple of these projects, Visual Studio regularly freezes while I'm working on the code. This doesn't happen for some of the web site projects, and I haven't seen it happen on any Web Application projects.
Symptoms
Each time it freezes, it takes about half a minute before I can use it again.
During a freeze, Windows Task Manager reports that Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe is maxing out one of the CPU cores.
Steps to Reproduce
Open a .cs file under the App_Code directory.
Make a change to the file.
Save the file.
Navigate somewhere else (eg switch tab, close the file, open different program in Windows).
Navigate back to the file (eg switch tab to it, open it, or go back to Visual Studio).
Other actions that sometimes seem to trigger the problem:
"Go to definition"
Opening a file
Previewing a file
Closing a file
Using a refactoring
"Find usages"
What I've Tried
Both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2015
Changing the website project's build action
Disabling "Build Web site as part of solution"
Deleting web references and the Bin folder seems to minimise the problem, but obviously this breaks the web site. Maybe web site projects experience this problem when they contain a lot of C# code other than code-behind files?
Similar problems
I found the following potentially-related problems using Google, but none of them seemed to contain a workaround or solution.
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe Time Theft
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe
Visual Studio 2012 freezes for approximately 30 seconds after every build
I noticed that the problem happened less often when I suspended ReSharper.
The problem still happened occasionally when editing classes under App_Code, but restarting Visual Studio worked around it.
I was facing a similar problem. A single Web application project with dozens of class libraries, migrated over from VS 2010 into VS 2013.
I was able to solve my problem by disabling the "Hosting Process" option:
To disable the hosting process
Open an executable project in Visual Studio. Projects that do not
produce executables (for example, class library or service projects)
do not have this option.
On the Project menu, click Properties.
Click the Debug tab.
Clear the Enable the Visual Studio hosting process check box.
Full details on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms185330.aspx
Another option for people experiencing this on old web applications that don't have the properties page in the accepted answer above.
Disable "Allow this precompiled site to be updatable".
Open Site/Solution
Right click and view Property Pages
Go to MSBuild Options
Uncheck "Allow this precompiled site to be updatable"
This worked for me.
This problem stopped happening when the Web Site project was converted into a Web Application project.
Not an easy solution, but it did stop the problem.
They symptoms in the question of this post sound exactly like the nightmares I just had today:
Other actions that sometimes seem to trigger the problem:
"Go to definition"
Opening a file
Previewing a file
Closing a file
Using a refactoring "Find usages"
Plus intellisense wasn't working (even with CTRL + J) and
'Peek definition' was hanging as well.
I had to keep task killing visual studio (both 2015 and 2017).
My fix was to go into the project that I was having problems with, open the 'Package Manager Console' and uninstall and re-install the 'DotNetCompilerPlatform'
uninstall-package Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform
and then
install-package Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform
So far every problem I was encountering has not resurfaced (but this was just today so still need to give it time).
UPDATE:
It started creeping back again. I noticed also that whomever had installed to the solution had only done it to two of the various projects. Uninstalling the compiler platform (which means using the compilers that came with Visual Studio) has made life sane again.

Azure, edit in visual studio online option - gone missing

I have two azurewebsites, in the azure management portal looking at the 'dashboard' both sites had a 'edit in visual online PREVIEW' option. This option has now disappeared on one of the sites - any possible reasons?. I have tried logout, close browser, clear cache etc..
Have you already opened it in Visual Studio? If so, just open Visual Studio and the solution will be listed under the Recent section of the start page. If it's not there, click the Recent Projects and Solutions option in the FILE menu. As for why it disappeared, hard to say. I just started using Visual Studio Online (aka TFS) and have found that while very convenient and easy... things are a little weird sometimes. Good luck!
Doh! - The switch to enable it on the config pane was off. - Thanks

Visual Studio 2012 + Resharper 7.1 = slooooow, what to do?

I used to have R# 6 with VS2010 and it was great.
Now I installed yesterday R# 7.1 trial and my VS 2012 became slow to the point I really
want to uninstall R# despite all the heartache involved with it.
Any advices on how to troubleshoot this performance issue?
Please be more specific: what kind of projects do you work with, did you notice which particular actions are slow (for example, opening a solution, invoking code completion (IntelliSense) in JavaScript or something like this). Without details I can only give you these general advises:
Close Visual Studio, try to delete your solution caches (they are usually located near your *.sln file, in folder named like _ReSharper.), open Visual Studio again.
Try to temporaty disable/uninstall all other Visual Studio extensions/plugins.
Try ReSharper 8.0 EAP, maybe your issue is fixed there.
ReSharper has a feature that allows you to profile it (menu ReSharper | Help | Profile Visual Studio). If you know a reproducible slow action, you can invoke this feature, make this action and then send this performance snapshot to JetBrains support (http://www.jetbrains.com/support/resharper/) or open a bugreport at http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/. They could tell you which part of ReSharper is slow and how to disable that part.

Can't change LESS highlighting colors in VS2012 [duplicate]

I have just installed Web Essentials 2012 for VS2012, but when I open a .less file, nothing is highlighted and the preview window doesn't display. Are there any settings or something I am missing to make this work?
Web Essentials does not include Less tools anymore, you need to install the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update to work with Less. A bit more details can be found on Web Essential's developer's blog.

jsDoc intellisense for Visual Studio 2012

Web Essentials for Visual Studio 2012 says it has support for jsDoc intellisense, but I can't seen any options for enabling it, and it doesn't appear to do anything.
Any ideas how to turn it on? or could anyone suggest an alternative extension?
Many thanks,
It seems to be working fine for me:
I just tested by following the link here to here and making a (slightly modified) test file of the first example. I don't know if the entire range of JsDoc functionality is supported.
Its now released (05/05/2013):
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/07d54d12-7133-4e15-becb-6f451ea3bea6

Resources