Reference defining all Visual Studio 2012 Solution Explorer Icons - visual-studio-2012

I have been unable to find a reference to the new Visual Studio 2012 Solution Explorer icons. From time to time, some of our .sql files icons change as with the one with the yellow triangle below. Does such a reference exist? If not, what does this yellow triangle icon mean?

I don't have a reference for all the icons. However, I believe the yellow triangle indicates that there are warnings associated with referenced assembly.
View the warnings by going to Error List (usually in the at the bottom of Visual Studio or in the menu VIEW - Error List or by Ctrl + W, E).
Then click on the Warnings tab. There should be one or more warnings about the assembly. Usually there are missing or conflicting references or something like "the primary reference X could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on Y which has a different version of the framework.
This could happen if you reference an assembly that is built for a new version of the .NET framework. (Example your assembly is using .NET 4.0 but the assembly you want to use is built with .NET 4.5).

The icon indicates a document warning.
Follow this link Visual Studio image library. The download contains a document listing of the icon and what it means.

As Chris Weber says, the problem may arise if you add a new project to your solution, and the new project targets a higher version of the .NET framework than the other projects in the same solution.
Fix: Right click your newly added project, go to properties. On the left handside, find the topmost tab called "Application". In the right frame, you should see a dropdown where you can set "Target Framework". Make sure this is the same version as the rest of your solution.

Related

Android Studio 3.4 - layout designer "tools" missing

When designing layouts in the Designer of Android Studio 3.4 I am missing the "tools" feature.
In older versions, there was a small button that allowed to set a properts in the tools mode (only visible in designer) instead of setting it for the android name space.
So in the XML it would be written
tools:background="#aaa"
instead of
android:background="#aaa"
However, with the new version, this is gone. It only seems to show the wrench symbol when I set this manually in the XML. But the button for adding a tools-property directly seems gone.
Any idea where the button went to?
Check under declared attributes
Press the + sign on the right and you can see a new row has been added below where you can search tools: {see the image below}
Or still, you can use the old school way like the above pic.

Extend Visual Studio functionality for Installshield ISPROJ Project type

InstallShield must be the crappiest "industry standard" application in existence, for reasons too numerous to enumerate here. However, one of those deficiencies is something I'd like to be able to fix, and with my first foray into writing an extension for Visual Studio (currently using 2015 version).
InstallShield has created a .isproj type, to allow integration with Visual Studio. This allows a developer to create an installer that references the output of a project as the files to include in the installer (rather than having to manually select individual files to include). This works well enough as long as the .isproj is being built in Visual Studio, and in a solution that references the project for which you need the output.
However, I also have an automated build for my installer projects, that we run on a build server using MSBuild. When attempting to build this way, we were getting completely opaque error messages indicating that the project output references above couldn't be resolved.
As with all InstallShield errors, Googling for answers turned up nothing except for multitudes of other people having the same problem. So I decided to dig into the plain text of the .isproj to see what I could find.
As it turns out, the .isproj type is a just a regular MSBuild script, and it even has lines commented out that explain options that can be added to the project; one of those things that can be added is an ItemGroup containing ProjectReference nodes. Manually adding the nodes helped solve the problem. Command-line build now works.
However, I am dissatisfied with a) having to manually type this stuff in, b) having no visual representation of what projects are being referenced, and c) not finding out about a problem until the build fails. So, I would like to be able to extend Visual Studio to help me with this. Here's what I'd like to do:
1) Add a "References" node to the project in Solution Explorer that acts like the References node for any normal .csproj.
2) Restrict the available References to other projects in the the current solution.
3) Visually represent a project with missing references (e.g. by underlining the project name with a colored squiggly, as with errors/warnings), and potentially failing the build if missing (depending on whether I want to treat it as an error or a warning; TBD).
To these ends, I've downloaded MPF for Projects - Visual Studio 2013, which provides an SDK for creating a new project type.
However, before digging too deeply, I need to know if it's even possible to EXTEND an existing project type, as described above, as I obviously don't have InstallShield source code. Also, any links or guidance as to a starting point for doing so would be greatly appreciated.

How to display native types when debugging in VS2012 for mixed mode C++/CLI MFC app

Possible duplicate of this question.
I have a MFC project that uses /clr switch and some C++/CLI code to use a .Net component. Originally this was on VS2005.
On upgrading to VS2012 Update 2, during debugging, no values or types were shown for native data types. I learned that a new mechanism for native data type visualization (natvis) was introduced in VS2010 and extended / enhanced in VS2012. Following the information on that page, I unchecked Managed C++ Compatibility Mode and C/C++ edit and continue. After this, breakpoints became disabled and stopped being hit. Using "Only Managed" debugger, the breakpoints were hit but no values were shown.
Finally, I used "mixed" debugger and used __debugbreak() to force a break. This resulted in only integer values being shown ONLY if they are local autos; and data types were picked up correctly. However, std::string or CString values are not shown and instead their type is shown in value column. Similarly, pointers, class members, or functions argument values are not shown and type information, Undefined value, or out of scope is shown in the value column.
The behavior is consistent across autos, locals and watch windows as well as mouse hover on symbols.
How do I get the native data types to display their values during debugging in VS2012 mixed mode C++/CLI MFC application.
I have read this question and verified that all symbols have been loaded in modules window.
Apparently, Microsoft is aware of the issue and the upcoming CTP of Update 3 should fix it.
Additionally, why do I need to use __debugbreak()?
A couple of days ago, Microsoft released a Visual Studio Service Pack 3 RC which may help (installing it myself right now). Here is the link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38832
Re-install Visual Studio 2012 and do not apply Service Pack 2.

Where can I locate themes for VS2012

Okay, the lack of color on VS2012 is gross.
Is there someplace I can get a theme pack or something for it so that it actually looks reasonable? I really liked the look of VS2010. However, the new one reminds me way too much of 1984.
While we are at it, is there anyway to have it stop shouting at me? ALL CAPS menus are pretty hard to read. [ note: caps was resolved, thanks Konamiman]
Yes, luckily you can revert the Visual Studio 2012 ALL CAPS menus to normal menus by hacking the registry:
Launch regedit and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General
Create a DWORD value named SuppressUppercaseConversion with value 1.
NOTE: As explained in the answer pointed by Yahoo Serious, the VisualStudio part on the registry key name should be changed to VSWinExpress for Visual Studio Express, and to VWDExpress for Visual Studio Express for Web.
UPDATE:
I have applied this hack in another machine and at first it did not work. It turned out that I had selected the key name from this response by double clicking it, then copied it, then pasted it in regedit. Well, by doing so I had inadvertently created the key with a trailing space in the name! And hence it did not work.
So, if you apply this hack and it seems to not work, ensure that there are no trailing spaces in the key name.
New Theme editor Specifically for 2012:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/366ad100-0003-4c9a-81a8-337d4e7ace05
Comes w/ VS 2010 style blue and a few others...
Here is a shot of my VS2012 install that almost looks like the familiar 2010 we are all used to. It makes me feel normal again!
Here is exactly how I did this, step-by-step:
1) Close all instances of Visual Studio
2) Download vsip and extract it to a temp directory. (as of 1/3/2013 the current version is 1.5.2)
3) Open up a command prompt with "Run as administrator"
4) Go to the temp directory and run VSIP.exe - This will run an interactive program that accepts commands.
4a) Type "backup --version=2012" - This will backup all of your VS2012 UI dlls, just in case something gets messed up and you want to uninstall VSIP.
4b) Type "extract" - This will extract all of the old icons from your installation of VS2010 (per VS2010 license VSIP can not distribute those icons so we have to have a local install to pull them from).
4c) Type "inject" - This will inject all of the old 2010 icons from the previous step into the VS2012 DLLs.
4d) Type "menus -n" - This will change the menus so they are NOT ALL CAPITALIZED!
5) Download and install NiceVS - do not download the one dated 10/14 or you will be missing icons. As of 1/3/2013 I downloaded the file named "NiceVS.0.8.1.1 Beta.Full.vsix".
6) Download and install VS2012 Color Theme Editor - The next time you start VS2012 select the "Blue" theme from the color select window.
Now you should have a nice install of VS2012 that looks like my screen shot above! It takes three different applications to patch that hideous UI but it's certainly workable now! If you don't have VS2010 installed on the same machine as VS2012 then you will have to run 4b on a machine with VS2010 and then copy the VSIP Images directory to your 2012 development machine.
Update: If you install "VS 2012 Update 1" after running these steps you will need to re-run step 4c from the VSIP admin prompt (or all of step 4 if you didn't keep the extract of the VS2010 images). The file menu icons and color scheme stay as they are but the update reverts the icons in the solution explorer back to the ugly ones. Re-running the VSIP inject fixes it right up!
I feel your pain, and have been checking daily for a solution. I've now discovered this site, which includes a theme editor, as well as drumroll a VS2010 theme for VS2012!
http://bchavez.bitarmory.com/archive/2012/08/27/modify-visual-studio-2012-dark-and-light-themes.aspx
Edit - I just noticed that Brian Chavez already posted the same link as me. However, I don't think it included a premade 2010 theme until today.
Edit 2 - Another theme editor - http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/366ad100-0003-4c9a-81a8-337d4e7ace05
AND ICONS!!! - http://vsip.codeplex.com/
http://studiostyl.es/
The themes for 2010 work for 2012 as well
This extension was just released a couple of days ago:
Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor
If you want to change the VS shell environment themes in Visual Studio 2012, try this utility:
Modify Visual Studio 2012 Dark (and Light) Themes
Source Code
The quick option to look is VSColorOutput extension for VS2012. Just look at Tools->Extensions and NUGet package will help you to locate it asap.
Another option would be downloading and Visual Studio Color Schemes. http://studiostyles.info/ . Here is a link to Scott Gu's blog which describes how to apply your preferred schema.

How do I add an ActiveX component to my project in Visual C++ 2008

I am just learning Visual C++ and I am used to Visual Basic where I just select the ActiveX component from a list of references. I can seem to add it anywhere. If I go to the Project | References, it is all blank. It only allows me to specify a path and when I specify the path of the AcitveX component, nothing new happens.
I dragged the ActiveX component into Visual C++ and it now shows up in the Object Browser but I cant seem to do anything with it.
I am using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.
Thanks
If it is a dialog based application then:
Right click -> Add Active X Component
It displays the list of components. Select the desired one.

Resources