Monday, October 5, 2009

Useful Visual Studio 2008 Settings

Here are some Visual Studio 2008 settings I have turned on to speed up my development time.
  1. Default Browser - I use Chrome as my default browser, but our application is targeting IE.  To have Visual Studio launch IE instead of chrome I found out one can right click a .aspx page select 'Browse ' With' and then from the next dialog set Internet Explorer as default.
  2. Autorecover - Sometimes over bad VPN connections AutoRecover will freeze the VS User Interface.  I used to change the autorecover path but now I go to settings --> Environment --> Autorecover and uncheck the save checkbox.
  3. Source Control - Settings --> Source Control --> Environment  I check get everything when a solution or project is opened.  VS still prompts for get latest on open so you are in control, but it is a nice reminder to sync up.  For saving I have 'Prompt for check out' selected to avoid silent checkouts.  Some files like .vsmdi and some dependant files need to be checked out prior to editing for this to work.  For Editing I have 'Do nothing' so I can edit and continue without checking out files.
  4. Outlining - Settings -->Text Editor --> C# --> Advanced I uncheck 'Enter outlining mode when files open.'  This prevents regions from hiding code from me when I open the file.  I also uncheck 'Surround generated code with #region' because I don't like regions.  Ever.
  5. Debugging - Settings --> Debugging --> General I uncheck 'Require source files to match the original version'  This is another one for edit and continue debugging.  Sometimes I'll notice something I want to change, like changing a string literal to reference a constant from a helper class, but don't want to stop my debugging.
  6. Symbols - Settings --> Debugging --> Symbols I cache my symbols to c:\debugsymbols so they can be shared between VS and Windbg.

1 comment:

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