In the new Visual Studio 2015 and the Web Essentials plugin, they've removed the function to compile certain files like Less files. Instead they suggest to use Gulp tasks.
While I applaud this decision and understand how to configure Gulp to compile the Less files, but because this is not an ASP.NET 5 application, the new files are not automatically added to the project and as such do not get copied when using the Publish function of VS2015.
As I see it the only way to get these file to copy is to manually add them to the project. This seems a but counter intuitive, if you create a task to compile **/*.less you have to look in your entire project to find the generated css files and add them all manually.
Am I just doing something wrong or is this just the way it works now?
Don't add the files manually, it is pretty easy to add them with a target in your project file. This is how we do it and we also use the gulp-rev package which modifies our filename dynamically (so they will not be cached by a browser). Here is how our BeforeBuild target from our .csproj file looks like:
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
<Exec Command="BeforeBuild.bat" WorkingDirectory="$(ProjectDir)" />
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="Scripts\Output\**\*.js" />
<Content Include="Content\**\output\**\*.css" />
</ItemGroup>
</Target>
And in our case when we publish all the generated js files from Scripts\Output\all_folders\ will get published too even though they are not in the csproj (and the same for the generated css files)
For those who preferred the "Web Essentials" method of compiling Less, Sass and CoffeeScript files, Mads Kristensen has published a new VS 2015 extension named Web Compiler. Try it. Also see his Bundler & Minifier extension for additional functionality removed from Web Essentials.
Related
I am attempting to publish an application from visual studio that has files in the solution. After instilling the program and executing it I get this error.
Could not find file
'C\Users[User Name]\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\7D4MADG.G94\9BLZYH2N.QOP\wdts..tion_0000000000000_0003.0000_8e564612a360b47a\wdAttrColSettings.xml
I need to know what I need to do to have the files in the Solution Items folder put in the wdts..tion_0000000000000_0003.0000_8e564612a360b47a folder when the application is installed.
In my brief experimentation in Visual Studio 2019, it doesn't look like you can copy Solution Items to the output directory.
This is, presumably, because there's no actual project (i.e. MSBuild or whatever) that would define those actions.
If you put those files inside one of the projects, you can use the "Copy to Output Directory" property.
My company has made extensive investments into a library of custom MSBuild targets files that we use to build our full product. Every project file we have in source control imports at least one custom targets file, which all ultimately end up importing a core targets file that contains the bulk of our general-use targets & properties.
Recently we added a new SSRS project to our solution, and this project (I believe) is the new rptproj format introduced in late 2017--in particular, it declares ToolsVersion="15.0" and imports Microsoft.ReportingServices.MSBuilder.targets from within the VS 2017 install directory.
The problem I'm experiencing is that none of the logical changes I make to the rptproj file appear to do anything; importing our shared targets file doesn't result the execution of any of our targets, such as targets declaring BeforeTargets="BeforeBuild" or even set against the ReportingServices-specific target with BeforeTargets="ReportBuilderTarget".
Furthermore, attempting to set the OutputPath results in exceedingly weird behavior. Declaring an OutputPath such as the following:
<OutputPath>$(SharedOutputPath)SSRS\$(MSBuildProjectName)</OutputPath>
...will result after build in the following folder within the project file's directory:
C:\workspace\solutionfolder\ReportProject1\$(SharedOutputPath)SSRS\$(MSBuildProjectFile)
This is weird because it's not even interpreting the well-known metadata token $(MSBuildProjectName) as a property, and emitting both it as well as $(SharedOutputPath) as string literals into the OutputPath property.
Furthermore, saving the rptproj file in VS results in a total wipe of all customizations to the file.
Reviewing the Microsoft.ReportingServices.MSBuilder.targets file, it seems as though it does some extensive gutting of the base Microsoft.Common.targets file, but in no way that I can imagine would prevent the basic usage of MSBuild properties or anything.
That's about the the extent of my MSBuild knowledge though so I'm not sure where to take it from here.
Overall it seems like MSBuild support for rptproj files is somewhat half-baked, but am I missing something?
Is it possible to customize Visual Studio 2017 SSRS rptproj MSBuild files?
As workaround, yon can build the project with MSBuild command line.
As test, I overwrite the default OutputPath for SSRS rptproj to:
<Project ToolsVersion="15.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Debug' ">
<FullPath>Debug</FullPath>
<OutputPath>bin\Debug\$(MSBuildProjectName)</OutputPath>
...
</PropertyGroup>
And add a custom target in the .rptproj file:
<Target Name="Test" BeforeTargets="BeforeBuild">
<Message Text="$(OutputPath)"></Message>
</Target>
Then I build the project with MSBuild command line:
msbuild "<ProjectPath>.rptproj" /property:Configuration=Debug
As result:
And the build file build.obj was generated in the bin\Debug\Report Project1 folder.
Hope this helps.
Is there a way I can compile all my razor views (to verify) any time I need? I found this doc which shows how it compiles on publish https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/views/view-compilation?view=aspnetcore-2.1&tabs=aspnetcore2x.
I am looking for an option within visual studio or even better via CLI that compiles and validates all views. I did find this official razor CLI tool in preview, but no documentation: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.Tools/1.1.0-preview4-final
Well, you can publish any time you need. The name ‘publish’ does not mean ‘push my site to the coliseum of public opinion’ :-)
All that it does stays local, and dotnet publish will by default create a directory under your project bin folder with, as you say, compiled views and other artefacts.
Per this comment, with .NET core 2.1 you can compile razor views at build time without needing to publish, by adding these two lines to the <PropertyGroup> section of your project file:
<RazorCompileOnBuild>true</RazorCompileOnBuild>
<ResolvedRazorCompileToolset>RazorSdk</ResolvedRazorCompileToolset>
This will cause them to compile to a [project].Views.dll, and you'll no longer need to distribute the cshtml files.
I am trying to move away from WebStorm and trying to configure VS Code to get few functionalities of WebStorm. I am trying to implement File Watcher functionality in VS Code.
I used to have File Watchers for Jade and Stylus in WebStorm. I already have gulp tasks for them and have added them in tasks.json as well. I have even provided keybindings for them too. But I have to run them manually. What I want is, whenever a file is saved, it checks whether it is a Jade file or a Stylus file and then run the appropriate task to generate either HTML or CSS file.
Is it possible to do it in VS Code yet? If yes, then how can I do that?
You must create an extension to accomplish your scenario. You said you already have gulp and task.json with your automation, so I think it would be relatively easy to translate that to an extension.
You should take care with this points when creating your extension
package.json
You extension should work for Jade or Stylus, so the package.json file should have:
"activationEvents": [
"onLanguage:Jade",
"onLanguage:Stylus"
]
OnSave Event
There are two events that you could use to detect file saving: onDidSaveTextDocument or onWillSaveTextDocument, depending on your needs.
FileWatcher
VSCode has a built in FileWatcher, you just have to create it via vscode.workspace.createFileSystemWatcher. The point is that it just monitors files within the opened folder/project.
If you need to detect changes outside, you should use fs.watchFile or chokidar.
Publishing/Installing
Don't worry if you think your extension only works for you or you can't publish on marketplace, for any reason, because you can create your own extensions, package them and install locally.
I'm using this yeoman generator (https://github.com/Swiip/generator-gulp-angular) for my project. And have added a couple of bower libraries, namely, videojs, ngDialog.
The problem I'm experiencing is that the css files included in these libraries aren't being packaged up into the vendor.css file like the rest of the packages are. I know that that the generator uses wiredep, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about it to find out what went wrong.
Basically, when I go to view source, I see that there are style includes underneath the vendor.css style include, eg.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../bower_components/ngDialog/css/ngDialog.css">
Also notice how it is included using "../". This would break if I'm in an HTML file that is in a directory other than the root.
Any pointers?
Thanks.
John.
Basically you don't have to worry about the building process, the gulpfile provided by gulp-angular is well configured for you future including bower components.
Once you run bower install your_component, be sure to run gulp build again in command line, it will then include the needed styles to your index.html.
If you would like to know more about the underlying process with that, you may check yourapp/src/index.html from line 12 to line 20 to get a sense of it. For how wiredep works for your bower components, the official document should suffice.