I can never remember how to do replaces in Visual Studio using regular expressions, so here’s a quick example.
I’ve got 30 classes that implement BasePage. I want to change this:
public class VariationsPage : BasePage
to this:
public class VariationsPage : BasePage<VariationsPage>
The regex should find:
public class {.*} \: BasePage
and replace with:
public class \1 \: BasePage<\1>
Edit: the syntax changed in Visual Studio 2012 and onwards! Instead of {.*} and \1 it is now (.*) and $1.
Today I installed the Visual Studio PerfWatson extension. Briefly, it automatically reports when Visual Studio hangs (for > 2 seconds) to Microsoft so that they can one day fix it.
But a nicety is the PerfWatson Monitor extension, which adds a cool little graphic it adds to the bottom of Visual Studio:
Since I’m running Visual Studio on my lowely netbook which constantly hangs (i.e. doesn’t respond for a few seconds), Microsoft will be getting plenty of data from me!
The Perf Watson blog is here but if you want to install it just go to Tools -> Extension Manager (in VS) and search for Watson in the Online Gallery. Install Visual Studio PerfWatson and PerfWatson Monitor.
I had another play with Resharper at work recently. There’s lots I like about it, for example the code suggestions, and the way it grays out unused functions and unused branches in methods. It’s really good for tidying up legacy code. And “Go To Implementation” is a massive time saver.
There’s a few things I don’t like about it. I don’t think it’s Refactoring options are much better than those built into Visual Studio – I only ever use Extract Method anyway. And I don’t like its “Find All References”.
Anyway, when the trial ran out and I uninstalled it, I found I’d lost my Intellisense squiggles (under Syntax errors and the like).
To turn them back on, it’s under Tools –> Options –> C# –> Advanced. Check “Underline errors in the editor” and “Show live semantic errors”.
I keep getting this error message pop up in Visual Studio – “A member of the db_owner role must use the Visual Studio database diagramming functionality in order to set up the required database diagramming objects on the SQL Server.”
Typically it would happen whenever I drag a table from the Server Explorer onto the LINQ To Sql designer dbml. The error displays, and then after that the Server Explorer window locks up with the Windows 7 hourglass aka the toilet bowl. I can keep using Visual Studio but I can’t do anything in Server Explorer so I eventually have to restart Visual Studio 2010.
I was a bit confused because 1. I’m a dbo, and 2. I’d already setup diagramming in SQL Server Management Studio 2008.
I eventually realised – the solution I’m working on has two DB connections in Server Explorer – my application’s main db for settings etc (which is the one I’m working with when the error is thrown), and another read-only external database which my application reads data from. That external db doesn’t have diagramming set up yet so I presume VS is complaining about that.
There are two workarounds – 1. ask a dbo to set up diagramming on the other db, or 2. remove the connection to the other db from Server Explorer.
I did option 2, and the downside is I have to re-add the connection whenever I want to update my dbml. Fortunately I don’t have to do that very often.
Matt's work blog 