VS2008 bugs makes me crazy

[va!n]

I have installed VS2008 with SP and VS2010... However i use normaly VS2008 for developing, since its seems to me a bit faster and more clean from the usability.

Atm VS2008 really makes me crazy, becuase its not the first time where the IDE destroyed parts of my project! Yesterday i just only added a ColorDialog from the Toolbar. After compiling a got a error that something (a jpg) is missing - but it was absolutly not comprehensible - so i closed the message and tried again to compile by pressing F5... Without chaning something on the code, this time the project normaly compiled and run... But then i noticed that the complete menustrip was missed (empty)!

I went back to the IDE and checked the source and the menustrip component... It was still available but all entries are lost! Damn, its not the first time! Why and how does this happens? Any way to undo this? (Ok, i have tons of backups but the things that happens in the IDE is something that absolutly should not happens in such a way)

Today i just only a added one new subentry to the contexMenuStrip... Compiling is fine and without any error... but i really cant believe what happens and what i see! All Subentries are not shown in the compiled/debugged version... But inside the IDE all entries are visible (available) - What the hell?

Here is a small screenshot you can check yourself - If you have any idea how and why does this happens or how to solve such problems (without tons of prj backup) i would thank you very much!

[hellfire]

I never ran into this specific problem but the long-term cure is called Qt.
And did you actually garble your menu items for security reasons?!

[va!n]

I found some infos about people having the same problem with VS2008 like me... Its even known on MSDN - http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/eu/csharpide/thread/2e279b58-b8f5-4469-8072-c3b353d3789a

That's a really strange bug which really can kill you 'n your project ^^

I know about QT and other 3rd part stuff / libs... The idea behind QT to have a platform independent GUI wihout rewriting the GUI stuff is really nice! But personally i am really no fan of such 3rd part libs! For example, why using QT or any other external GUI when the OS you are working on has its own (and even its own standard) GUI? People wihout QT installed cant run your app and so on...

For platform independent apps it may be ok - however i really prefer a "real windows GUI" on windows systems

Since i am trying to learn and code in C# i will still use the C# WinForms - so the code and even GUI is just one part and complete portable as long as you dont use invoke to get direct access to system DLLs.

Anyway many thanks for your feedback and the idea to use QT - which is surely a great thing for some peoples projects

Hehe... yes, maybe the menu items are garbled for security reasons

[hellfire]

why using QT or any other external GUI when the OS you are working on has its own (and even its own standard) GUI?

Although I have overwhelming arguments I'm just going to respect your opinion

[Jim]

You still have the option of using VS2010   I use it all day and I find it excellent.

From the linked msdn article:

If you're using source control (CM) then you can retrieve the last good version from CM

This is excellent advice.  I use Subversion and TortoiseSVN even when I'm developing on my own at home.  It takes about 10 mins to set up and saves hours regularly.  You can host it on the same machine you develop on.

Jim

[va!n]

@Jim:
Yes i know about the option to use VS2010 C#, as i have both (2008 and 2010) installed here! In the past i installed the beta or RTM version of VS2010. Some weeks ago i have d/l and installed the latest official Express version of VS2010 C#... When taking a look to the about requester it shows me: Version 10.0.30319.1 RTMRel == is this the current official final express release? I am a bit confused about the RTMRel thing ^^

Sadly i dont really know nor understand what the source control (CM) in the article means! Are Subversion and TortoiseSVN both programs? I have tried an open source SVN in the past for a purebasic project, where some ppl has worked on! Everbody has uploaded the latest version of his sourcefile (1 file) to the SVN! Coding was done on local machine and sources has been saved on local machines too! Uploading just by hand to SVN.

I dont know how to setup or use SVN with C# projects... So i dont really need a FTP server for using this? C# with SVN are completly new to me!

[Jim]

A Source Control tool is a central database that holds all your code.
Instead of everyone working on a single copy of the code and emailing and FTPing code around, everyone does their work on a copy of the code they got from that database.
When they complete a new feature, they 'commit' the changes to the central database.  These tools are clever enough to work out what changed, if your change conflicts with another coder's changes, and to update the central database's copy of the code.
Then, at any time, you can go to that central database and ask for the latest code (containing other people's changes) or, even more usefully, get any previous version of the code.  So the msdn article is saying, "So what if visual studio broke your code, go back to your source database and get the last version that isn't broken and start over again with that."

As you can see, having that kind of power would be useful even for a single coder.  You can see how your project is coming along, check out what changed and when, and be able to go back to a previous version if you stuff something up and can't remember or work out what it was.
It also means all your code is in a central place, which is excellent for making backups.  I have everything I've ever done that I cared about under source control and backed up daily.

Subversion is a source control database made by Collabnet.  It is free and excellent.  That is the server.

TortoiseSVN is a Windows add-in that you use as a client to Subversion.  You tell it the URL of the Subversion server and it is able to do all the source control operations from within Windows menus.  Again, it is free and pretty excellent.

With that installed, you can just go Right Click, Add and put your files in source control.  It's that simple.

You can have the server and the client on one machine.  The server is (or was, anyway, looks like they've made some fairly radical changes recently) just a Windows service that runs in the background when the PC starts up.

There are other source control databases, Git is becoming popular and is free and is an interesting variation on distributed source control, Perforce is good but probably not free, CVS  (free) and Microsoft SourceSafe (not free) are not so good.

Jim

[benny!]

Although this is offtopic, if you are looking for a free internet service for source
control - you might want to try bitbucket.org. They are using Mercurial instead
of SVN. This way you do not need to set up your own server.