Visualstudio on ZeroSharp

My essential Visual Studio tools and extensions

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:45:00 +0100

This is part two of a series of posts about the software and tools I find invaluable. See part 1 and part 3.

CodeRush

I’ve been using DevExpress CodeRush since 2005. Check out this video tutorial for a lightening tour of a lot of the features, and look at the DevExpress youtube channel for a load of other tutorials.

NCrunch

NCrunch provides continuous testing for Visual Studio. When I make any change to my code which breaks a unit test, the NCrunch risk status goes red a few seconds later, even without recompiling. I get immediate feedback for any breaking change, so long as I have a test for it. Not only does it encourages me and my team to write good tests, but it allows us to make new changes and refactor with confidence.

Always run Visual Studio as an Administrator

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 07:49:00 +0100

I always run Visual Studio as an administrator. There are various reasons why this is necessary including:

using IIS with a web application
running web UI tests
profiling

In fact there’s a list on MSDN of all the actions you require administrator permissions.

Here is a way to make sure Visual Studio always opens with elevated privileges, even if you double click on a .sln file. (I’m running Windows 8.)

Right-click devenv.exe
Select Troubleshoot program
Check The program requires additional permissions
Click Next
Click Test the program…
Wait for the program to launch
Click Next
Select Yes, save these settings for this program
Click Close

If you have multiple versions of Visual Studio installed, you should repeat the operation for all of the following.

Fix Visual Studio update links when running as Administrator

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 09:58:00 +0100

This post is about fixing an annoyance whereby Visual Studio refuses to update extensions when running as an administrator.

I always had a problem when an update to an extension or tool tried to open the browser. For instance, I would see this notification in the system tray.

And then when I went to Tools/Extensions and Updates… in Visual Studio, I’d get to something like this:

But the Update button was not responding to any clicks. The only workaround I found was to restart Visual Studio under my normal user account and then the button would work.

NuGet 1.8 Installation Problem

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:26:00 +0100

The NuGet team just released NuGet 1.8. Unfortunately there is an issue when upgrading it via the NuGet package manager. The following message appears and the installation fails.

VSIXInstaller.SignatureMismatchException: The installed version of 'NuGet Package Manager' 
is signed, but the update version has an invalid signature. Therefore, Extension Manager 
cannot install the update. 

 at VSIXInstaller.Common.VerifyMatchingExtensionSignatures(IInstalledExtension installedExtension, 
 IInstallableExtension updateExtension) 
 at VSIXInstaller.InstallProgressPage.BeginInstallVSIX(SupportedVSSKU targetAppID)

As explained in the NuGet release notes, one solution is to uninstall NuGet from the VS Extension Gallery before reinstalling. Note: If Visual Studio won’t allow you to uninstall the extension (the Uninstall button is disabled), then you likely need to restart Visual Studio using “Run as Administrator.”