"Correct syntax" Pop-up from visual studio .net 2003 (language c++) for "devenv"

[chaitu]

Hi guys,

I've written a parallel build program (in Perl) that takes a
pre-computed dependency tree of many projects in 2 visual studio .net
2003 solution (.sln) files here at my company, and builds projects at a
same level of dependency parallelly.

While doing this, sometimes I get "Microsoft Visual Studio experienced
some errors and needs to close" pop-up (which was gone after I disabled
error-reporting for programs from Control Panel) but I keep getting
pop-ups describing the correct syntax for running "devenv" command (I
use this command to build projects from command-line).

I've tried searching a lot of places for what this pop-up means, why it
comes up, and how I prevent its popping up? My program has a project
build retry mechanism so even if the thread building it fails, one more
thread later will build it, so I want to disable ALL popups from visual
studio and keep my programs running, without waiting for me to manually
close the popups.

Any inputs will be highly appreciated!

-Krishna

 

[Carl Daniel [VC++ MVP]]

Hi guys,

I've written a parallel build program (in Perl) that takes a
pre-computed dependency tree of many projects in 2 visual studio .net
2003 solution (.sln) files here at my company, and builds projects at
a same level of dependency parallelly.

While doing this, sometimes I get "Microsoft Visual Studio experienced
some errors and needs to close" pop-up (which was gone after I
disabled error-reporting for programs from Control Panel) but I keep
getting pop-ups describing the correct syntax for running "devenv"
command (I use this command to build projects from command-line).

I've tried searching a lot of places for what this pop-up means, why
it comes up, and how I prevent its popping up? My program has a
project build retry mechanism so even if the thread building it
fails, one more thread later will build it, so I want to disable ALL
popups from visual studio and keep my programs running, without
waiting for me to manually close the popups.

You might want to try using vcbuild.exe instead of devenv to buld the
projects - it's a command-line tool intended for just the sort of usage
you're describing.

vcbuild.exe first appeard in VC7.1 (or maybe VC7) and is supported for VC8
as well. Just type vcbuild from a Visual Studio 2003 Command Prompt to see
the command-line options.

-cd

 

[chaitu]

Hi Carl,

I can't see vcbuild in my installation here. I am using Visual Studio
..NET 2003 and after a search on the entire C drive I could only find
vcbuild.dll but not .exe.

What is really irritating is this - I don't care if the thread building
the project runs into some kinda crash or failure or unhandled
exception. I just don't want those stupid popups :-( It causes my
complete thread manager program to "block wait" on the threads (I
cannot remove this block wait)!!!

I've tried disabling error reporting in
Control_Panel->System->Advanced->Error_Reporting but STILL the Visual
Studio throws that pop-up. I just don't understand whether it's a bug
in Windows 2003 or Visual Studio .NET 2003.

Any pointers in helping me?

 

[psexton]

vcbuild.exe didn't seem to be included in my VS2003 install either. I
finally got a copy at:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/cplusplus/

I haven't been able to get it to work so far with a .sln file. I'm
getting "Error: project file ... was not found or not a valid project
file." It opens just fine in the IDE, so I'm at a standstill for the
moment. Maybe vcbuild doesn't like solutions (though it's supposed to
handle them; I dragged the the file into the command prompt window, so
the past must be right ???)

Another problem I had with the VS2005 version is the config name:
Release or Debug always gave an error. I finally found an answer to
that one on USENET: it must be "Release|Win32" (or whatever) and it
MUST be in quotes or the pipe character will cause an error too. This
may or may not apply to 2003 (can't get far enough to find out.)

If you have any better luck, don't be shy.... I'd love to know if
vcbuild.dll is useful for anything.

Paul

 

[Dennis]

vcbuild.exe didn't seem to be included in my VS2003 install either. I
finally got a copy at:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/cplusplus/

I haven't been able to get it to work so far with a .sln file. I'm
getting "Error: project file ... was not found or not a valid project
file." It opens just fine in the IDE, so I'm at a standstill for the
moment. Maybe vcbuild doesn't like solutions (though it's supposed to
handle them; I dragged the the file into the command prompt window, so
the past must be right ???)

Another problem I had with the VS2005 version is the config name:
Release or Debug always gave an error. I finally found an answer to
that one on USENET: it must be "Release|Win32" (or whatever) and it
MUST be in quotes or the pipe character will cause an error too. This
may or may not apply to 2003 (can't get far enough to find out.)

If you have any better luck, don't be shy.... I'd love to know if
vcbuild.dll is useful for anything.

Prior to the official release of 2005, we updated our build scripts to use
vcbuild. IIRc that version did not handle solution files, so we swtiched to
building the individual project files.
Since there were some syntactic differences between 2003 and 2005 projects,
we wrapped the call in a batch file.
build project config platform

Looking at the extension, it decides whether to use vcbuild (vcproj) or
msbuild (vbproj, csproj).

The 2005 version apparently handles solution files, though I've not tried
it.

Dennis