Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 3, Navigating Visual Studio

#21 Never Forget a TODO Again

HACK

The task list does not always show every comment. It needs

to be configured according to what you are currently work-

ing on. If you are trying to find and fix compilation errors,

chances are that you don’t want to also see a bunch of com-

ments. What the task list displays is configurable in Visual

Studio .NET 2003 through the Show Tasks list under the

View menu in the toolbar. There are options to show just

build errors, tasks in the current file, all, or comments.

In Visual Studio 2005, the options list has moved to the task

list itself. You will now see a drop-down list at the top of the

task list that lets you choose what should be displayed in the

task list. You will also notice that errors are no longer dis-

played in the task list in Visual Studio 2005; instead, there is

a separate error list just for build errors and warnings.

For the purpose of this hack, options will need to be set to

All or Comments.

You can then click on this comment and be taken to the place where you

need to add code. The other two comments work much the same way. You

simply need to use

//HACK: and a task list item will be created for that com-

ment. You can use shortcuts to step back and forth between tasks as well.

The View.NextTask (Ctrl-Shift-F12) and View.PreviousTask (no default

shortcut) commands can be used to step through the tasks listed ...