Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 4, Customizing Visual Studio

#35 Modify the Build Output and Navigate the Results

HACK

"Build Stopped with a failure on the {0} project. {1}", _

Project, System.Environment.NewLine))

'The build failed...cancel any further builds.

DTE.ExecuteCommand("Build.Cancel")

DTE.ExecuteCommand("View.Output")

End If

End Sub

The output on a failed build now looks like the screen shown in Figure 4-28.

Of course, on a single project build this hack doesn’t help much, but if you

have a large number of build errors this little hack will quickly show you at

the bottom of your results which project is the culprit.

You can use this technique to write information to any of the IDE windows

you wish. Just modify which window you assign to the variable

win by alter-

ing the constant value for the window, or change the item you are looking

for in the

OutputWindowPanes collection (to write to the Database output win-

dow, for example). By altering the output to the Build output window, you

can provide yourself with more information about the build, including the

progress of any processes you have added.

Navigate Build Results with the Output Window

By default, Visual Studio will list all of the build warnings and errors as tasks

within the Task List window after a build. This task list can then be used to

navigate to the specific lines of code that are causing those warning and

errors; however, there is also another ...