VMWare VMDebugger “unable to detect current startup project”

 

I spent many small packets of time trying to find a solution to this problem over about two months.  Luckily, I stumbled across an answer that actually worked for me.

Problem: Visual Studio 2008 with VMWare VMDebugger integration does not work.  When I try to launch debugging in a VM, I get a message that says “Unable to detect current startup project”.

Solution:  Remove any installer projects that are in the solution.

Source: Read MartinMoesby comment here.

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Debug an IE Add-On in Visual Studio 2008

I’m working on a project that involves creating an IE Add-On in C#.  It is an inherited project that was created in Visual Studio 2005 targeting the .NET Framework 2.0.

Well, times have changed.  I am now doing most of my development in Visual Studio 2008, and (when lucky) I am using the features of the .NET Framework 3.0 or higher.  When I first made the switch, I tried to use 2008 to continue my work on the toolbar, but I failed miserably.  I was shocked to find out that my process of registering my assembly in a post-build action and launching IE as a Start Action did not work in 2008.  At the time, I quickly got over it, and preserved 2005 just for that project.

Luckily, in a more recent attempt to use 2008 for this type of development, I was able to solve the problem.  Check it out.

Problem:

Whenever I tried to debug my IE Toolbar project in Visual Studio 2008, I would get a nasty exception that says, “Error while trying to run project.  Unable to start debugging”

My project is configured to register the assembly using regasm in a Post-build step.  Then, as you can see below, the VS Debugger is configured to start Internet Explorer (and subsequently attach to the process).

Well, that was the wrong way of doing it.  I was able to get it to work successfully by modifying the Start Action like such:

And it worked!

UPDATE:  I still had issues on a separate computer.  Adding “about:blank” to the command line arguments fixed the issue.

Microsoft.WebApplication.targets not found

While setting up a non-Microsoft CI environment for an ASP.NET MVC project, I came across an interesting problem.  My build agent was unable to compile my project because it could not find the Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file, which, on the development computer is located under the C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications directory.

I wanted a quick solution, so I Googled it.  The top two sites resolved the issue by creating the path on the build server and copying the file over.  That is A solution to the problem.  I suppose another solution would be to install Visual Studio on the build agent.  But, that (borderline) defeats the purpose.

I decided to make a copy of the Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file in the folder of the solution.  Then, I opened the web project file and edited the line that points to the file.  I changed:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

to

<Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

The project builds successfully in both environments now!

(Reminder) How to reset my environment settings in Visual Studio 2008

A co-worker once asked me how to reset his environment settings. His environment was set to Visual Basic, but he wanted to change it to C#. Both of us are very experienced .NET programmers, but neither of us could remember how to do it. Here is a reminder to us all:

Goto Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings