VS.NET : 30 Projects, Kiss intellisense goodbye...
At 20 projects the IDE starts to randomly lock up DLL's and give some pretty generic reasons why it cant build.
The next big step is 30 projects, and now that my Solution has hit 30 projects Im randomly loosing intellisense. Why? Because it hates me.
Luckily this entire Solution shouldnt grow much more beyond 30 because I do not want too see what happens when I hit the big 40.
5 Comments
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Yves Reynhout said
It is beyond me how people can develop this way. Don't you have boundaries, subsytems and/or layers in your software? Don't you use contract/interface-based design?
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to critize. I'm more intrigued about what kind of system requires you to have "all that" in your IDE? Is it merely "developer convenience" to have everything in one solution? Are you using file references? I'm assuming you're not, if so why not?
The only motivation to have everything in one solution (other than developer convenience) is that you might want to do system wide refactoring (changing a certain aspect of your code). But even this can be done gradually.
Please, enlighten me!
Adam said
I will definitely agree with Yves comments. We have a product here at work, and it is composed of roughly 45 separate projects, however I never have a solution with more than 7 or 8 projects open at a time. We use file references and common/structured build directories. Unless interfaces change, I don't ever need to work with any more projects than the ones I'm directly working on.
Rob Chartier said
I dont see how defined boundries, subsystems and/or layers in my software should matter. But to answer you, of course there is. Very strict. And yes, this does NOT include any of the referenced DLL's we managed to take out of the solution.
Of the 30 projects I say about 25 of them are changed daily (as we move to a beta release), and the rest are changed at least once a week. Its a work in progress, with many different aspects.
I defintely do NOT want to managed more than one Solution for this system. That, IMHO would be hell, especially when the IDE should just be able to handle this.
Should we work around the limitations of the IDE, or should it just be able to handle this -medium sized- application?
Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist said
How are you managing the build/test/release process ?
Paul Glavich said
FWIW, I had the same problem regarding the intellisense. In short, the only way to get it back was to start up VS.NEt again, or a lot of times a full rebuild woulddo the trick. Dont know why though.
As to defining layers, well thats all very nice but sometimes you need to do these things (large number of projects), but even with strict service oriented/contract based architecture and distinct layers as you suggest, wouldn't it still be possible to exceed the 30 project count?