In the same spirit as the question Can I download the Visual C++ Command Line Compiler without Visual Studio? I would like to see if it is easy to bundle the appropriate part of Visual Studio to build Universal App written in C++. Following the answer by #Alek to the aforementioned question, I managed to create an archive where I can basically unzip and use. But this is for traditional desktop (I would say, command-line) programs. I tried to do similar thing for Universal App and there are a couple of issues
The official way (i.e. what Visual Studio does under the hood) is to use MSBuild. Unfortunately, I do not know what are and how to get all of its dependencies. It seems to require significant configuration effort as well.
There is no documentation on how to build resources (e.g. generate C++ source and headers from XAML), how to generate the .appx. If possible, a Makefile template is very much appreciated.
The reason to ask for this is because Visual Studio failed me so many times. For instance, the November Update messed up my entire system; the SDK installer fail at 96% and rolled back. Previously, the upgrade to VS2015 (from 2013) also messed me up entirely. It seems that the only solution to these problems is complete uninstall. Having a portable archive where I can just unzip and restore my production environment back to health is something I would say extremely desirable.
Note: I do not care about the IDE. I only need the ability to build apps from source code on the command prompt.
Related
On a project I am working on, I am maintaining some Feature Tests written in SpecFlow. Our team started using Visual Studio 2017 about a year ago, and we finally got around to doing some upkeep on our tests!
Our tests for the project I'm working on were originally written in SpecFlow 2.3.2, and were last updated in Visual Studio 2015.
The SpecFlowSingleFileGenerator is known to not work on VS 2017, so I spent the better part of yesterday changing our suite to use the MSBuildSingleFileGenerator instead as detailed in this article in SpecFlow's official documentation
Problem:
Locally, I can build my solution, including the Feature Test project just fine.
However, I keep getting the following error when I try to build the project on our build server:
[exec] C:\CheckoutDirectory\My Awesome Project\packages\SpecFlow.Tools.MsBuild.Generation.2.3.2\build\SpecFlow.Tools.MsBuild.Generation.targets(45,5):
error MSB4036: The "GenerateAll" task was not found.
Check the following:
1.) The name of the task in the project file is the same as the name of the task class.
2.) The task class is "public" and implements the Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask interface.
3.) The task is correctly declared with <UsingTask> in the project file, or in the *.tasks files located in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\15.0\Bin" directory. [C:\CheckoutDirectory\My Awesome Project\AwesomeProject.FeatureTest\AwesomeProject.FeatureTest.csproj]
I should point out that our team has no experience with writing MS Build tasks, as hitherto we haven't needed to; we use NAnt build scripts on TeamCity to manage our build work. It's clear that error message would be helpful...if we knew literally anything about it.
Now, normally the correct answer would be: Google it. I did that, and this specific error has no pertinent results.
Additionally, this is blocking my team, since we need our build to work. I don't have the time to do the research and education necessary to properly understand how MS Build technology works. That wil have to come later.
Question:
Bearing in mind that SpecFlow has broken our process, and our team's lack of knowledge about the MS Build system: I need to know how to get around the "GenerateAll" task was not found error. What do I do to get around it?
Secondary Question:
I'm also open to lateral thinking. Is there some way to hack either VS 2017 or SpecFlow to make the SpecFlowSingleFileGenerator "compatible" with each other? The objective here is NOT to avoid making changes, but to control the changes. I need a path towards transitioning from the old file generator to the MS build generation system.
Additional Information:
So, I did some digging, and I found a place where "GenerateAll" is being called in the SpecFlow.Tools.MsBuild.Generation.targets file:
<Target Name="UpdateFeatureFilesInProject"
DependsOnTargets="BeforeUpdateFeatureFilesInProject"
Inputs="#(SpecFlowFeatureFiles)" Outputs="#(SpecFlowFeatureFiles->'%(RelativeDir)\%(Filename).feature.cs')">
<GenerateAll
ShowTrace="$(ShowTrace)"
BuildServerMode="$(BuildServerMode)"
OverwriteReadOnlyFiles="$(OverwriteReadOnlyFiles)"
ProjectPath="$(MSBuildProjectFullPath)"
ForceGeneration="$(ForceGeneration)"
VerboseOutput="$(VerboseOutput)"
DebugTask="$(SpecFlow_DebugMSBuildTask)"
>
<Output TaskParameter="GeneratedFiles" ItemName="SpecFlowGeneratedFiles" />
</GenerateAll>
</Target>
Because I've confirmed that this is being copied out to the build server, the situation is yet more mysterious. It appears that the NuGet package is being pulled down faithfully. Therefore, I can't figure out why my local copy is behaving differently than the copy on the build server.
I am not sure where you found this statement:
The SpecFlowSingleFileGenerator is known to not work on VS 2017
The SpecFlowSingleFileGenerator is working in VS2015, VS2017 and VS2019. We see it as a legacy feature, but it's still there. Since some weeks it is disabled by default, but you can enable it in the options.
It works for SpecFlow >= 2.3.2 and 2.4. For SpecFlow 3 you have to use the MSBuild integration. There are some problems with older versions of SpecFlow, but with them it can also work. It depends on your setup.
About your MSBuild error:
The MSBuild Task for SpecFlow < 3.0 is in the specflow.exe. Is it on your build server?
It is part of the SpecFlow NuGet packages. Normally you get this kind of error if MSBuild can't find the assembly where the task is.
For "debugging" problems with MSBuild, I can highly recommend to use the MSBuild Structured Log Viewer (http://msbuildlog.com/). With it, it makes it easy so see what is happening in your build.
We have an example for MSBuild Code- Behind- Generation with SpecFlow 2.3.2 here: https://github.com/techtalk/SpecFlow-Examples/tree/master/MSBuild/OldCSProj_SpecFlow232
You could compare your project with this example.
Full disclosure: I am one of the maintainers of SpecFlow.
I'm trying to start a work in vscode , latest C++ plugin version supports ms debugger, so as I'm mostly working under windows it was a signal to try this.
c++ tools plugin from MS and cmake tools were installed.
my test project was however not built . the problem is clear , but I need an advice from experienced vscode users how to solve this right.
cmake doesn't see vc compiler.
(after using QtCreator) I expected that vscode could detect vc installation... however that's not so. ok, I have a two ways:
fill environment variables INCLUDE/LIB/PATH with a headers, libs and binaries
just run vcvarsall.bat x64
Second way is a simple and reliable. so final question is:
how to run .bat at the begining of vscode start?
(I don't mean write another bat/cmd, prepare the environment and run vscode inside the same script after that)
Although the question is fairly old, I'll try to give a useful answer, in case others stumble across, just like I did.
I believe what you are trying to achieve is not possible. Code inherits the environment it was started with. If you did not launch it from a developer command prompt, you will not be able build and debug. (Building might be possible if every task first starts the vcvarsall.bat, but that slows things down by a lot. Debugging I think will still not work.)
If you are willing to, you can check out vector-of-bools CMake Tools extension which does build automation as well as automatic MSVC detection. It builds using CMake (thus you need to write your build scripts using CMake), but it will take care of building just by pressing F7, like what most VS users are familiar with.
I have a build engine from ARM, called yotta. I have been working with the command line, where with the following commands, I can build projects and produce outputs.
$ yt target bbc-microbit-gcc
$ yt build
The compiled file is then accessible from build/bbc-microbit-gcc/source/Project-name-combined.hex
Is it possible to automate this CLI and build it into Visual Studio as a build definition? I know in Visual Studio Team Services / Team Foundation Server), you can define build steps using the command line, what is the local equivalent.
I am using Visual Studio Enterprise 2015. Any nudge in the right direction would be much appreciated.
EDIT:
I have seen the GCC4mbed project, but it would be good to use the new yotta command line build to do this. As far as VS is concerned is a command line tool which adds a built version of the project to a directory, a build tool? If so, then I know I can just follow the guides to add a custom build tool to VS however, it strikes me that VS might need a build tool to be in a certain standard to make intellisense etc work. In which case I might need to create a build tool on top of the existing yotta work and specify this to VS? Ideas would be muuch appreciated.
did you try to use cmake generators option which yotta provides (as it uses CMake)?
yotta build --help
-G CMAKE_GENERATOR, --cmake-generator CMAKE_GENERATOR
CMake generator to use (defaults to Ninja). You can use this to generate IDE project files instead, see cmake --help
The ideal solution which implemented partially as VS debug engine is still under development, just recently allowed gdb extensions. The tool on top of yotta for debugging is called Valinor (which is using progen: https://github.com/project-generator/project_generator).
Progen supports visual studio gdb (its very limited at the moment as explained later). I was able to use yotta debug with visual studio, but not without hacks (dated back in November-December 2015). The idea was to have a visual studio project with gdb setup and custom build commands (make,cmake or yotta) (in our case would be pyOCD settings, could be openOCD or jlinkGDB, and built environment for yotta).
As I recall, you commented on the issue on https://github.com/project-generator/project_generator/issues/98, and I haven't heard back from you. The problems I had I recall was I could not start gdb server (I had to do it manually), I could not make it to pass arguments to gdb (like load/reset/halt when starting the session).
I'll update my VS plugins and check if there were any updates in gdb plugins, I was told there should be.
I appreciate any help, either for progen or valinor to make this available for users.
curl being new to me, I am figuring out an easier way to compile it on Windows. I've managed to find a good documentation explaining in layman's terms all the steps, however this doc is based on curl-7.9.6.
It was simpler since curllib.dsw which is the Visual Studio Project file for curllib was found in folder curl-7.9.6\lib. So building it was resulting in libcurl.dll + libcurl.lib
Unfortunately this project file is no more in the latest version 7.46.0, and I would not like to mess around using other techniques I am not familiar with, compiler other than msvc (e.g MinGw), and if possible without resorting to cmd.
I have already done some researches online before posting this thread, but we never know maybe someone has written on this topic very simple documentation that everyone could understand and willing to share it publicly to get both the static library file and DLL (raised just above) or have found a way to get back the project file (.dsw) in the latest release which will a priori be straightforward to compile using Visual Studio 2013 (v120)
Best
I'm looking for a native C++ static analysis tool that I can use both from within Visual Studio and as part of a TFS 2010 build. It must also work for 64-bit compilation. Does anyone know any tools that support this?
I am using CppCheck.
This is a commandline tool which we use in our continous integration server, but I'm sure it can be called from a pre/post build event. It outputs to console or file (text/xml).
See our SD C++ CloneDR tool, which detects cloned code in spite of changes to layout, variable names and often even replaced statements.
This tool can be launched from a command line.
I'm not sure about 64-bit compilation. But, I think can use FxCop for static code analysis of C++ projects by integrating FxCop into VS2010 project, run fxcopcmd.exe in the post-build event to automatically perform code analysis when building projects (or) you can use Invoke Process Activity in Build process Template.
According to this blog, Visual Studio 11 will support 64-bit code analysis out-of-the-box in all editions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codeanalysis/archive/2012/03/09/what-s-new-in-code-analysis-for-visual-studio-11.aspx