First of all...thank you for all who have supplied your solutions.
Second of all...none of the proposed solutions worked for me. However, I've worked out a solution that does work for me :)
Thirdly...I'm going to get long winded for those of us who are new (This includes myself to a degree). Experts...bare with me.
My Config:
- OS = WinXP Pro SP3 32bit
- IDE = VS2010 Pro
- My Solution has 5 Projects in it. However, only 1 of the projects outputs an Executable (The other 4 are Class Libs [DLLs])
** NOTE ** To those of you who have not ventured beyond the standard, by default, project output goes into the folder for that particular project in the bin directory:
- $(ProjectDir)Bin
So if you have 5 Projects, you would have 5 different bin folders where files are being dumped to after compilation:
Solution\Project#1\bin
Solution\Project#2\bin
Solution\Project#5\bin
** NOTE ** My Solution DOES NOT work the way the Note above describes
I like having everything in one place, so I changed these defaults.
- ALL of the output from ALL of my projects is being put into a single folder under the main Solution Directory. For each project of my projects I did the following:
- [Project Properties] >> Build Tab >> Output Path = ..\Build\[Solution Config]
- This means when in the:
- Debug Config --> the output path = $(SolutionDir)Build\Debug
- Release Config --> the output path = $(SolutionDir)Build\Release
The directory manipulation I've done with my projects does nothing to help nor hinder the problems that we've all be facing with the IDE (VS2010 in my case) from erroring out with the [expletive here] "file in use" error. It just moves the problem to
another folder.
Ok...with all that said, here is what I've found in my case:
At the Top of the Thread Mathew Wright stated [I'm going to paraphrase], move the lock file somewhere else. This got me on the right track. However, just moving the lock file wasn't enough for me. I also had to move the file it was locking against.
The 2 Problem Files:
I found that VS2010 was getting hung up on the Output from my EXE Project (Lets just call it "app"). In particular, it was:
- App.exe
- App.exe.locked
VS2010 was actually generating a *.Locked file for each of my projects, but I found that it was the lock files for my EXE project that matttered. I was unable to Delete either of these file...period. Whether from the cmdline, or Explorer, or the Pre-Build(Just
a commandline anyway...right?). However, I found that I COULD move the files (Thanks Matthew). What was interesting was, even though after I moved them, I still couldn't delete them. But that doesn't matter. The act of getting these 2 files out of my Build
Directory fixes my issue.
But this brings me to the next issue I had to overcome. Everybody have your MS-DOS hats on?!?! I've already stated that I can move the files, but I cannot delete them. Well, this means that they cannot be overwritten either. So putting a blanket statement
of "Move app.exe to new folder" won't work. Even when you give the move command the /Y option. I get an "Access Denied" every time. But, I can rename the file during the move. So Here are the 3 command lines that I put in my Pre-Build to fix my problem:
SET BaseName=%date:~10,4%%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%_%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%.%time:~9,2%
if exist "$(TargetPath).locked" move "$(TargetPath).locked" "$(SolutionDir)\build\trash\%BaseName%.locked"
if exist "$(TargetPath)" move /Y "$(TargetPath)" "$(SolutionDir)\build\trash\%BaseName%.exe"
For those of you who do not remember (or know for that matter) you good ol' DOS commands, that first line is simply creating an Environment Variable that takes the current date and time and formats it into something that can be used in a file name. I believe
you have to be careful in using the command above because it might change based on localization (??). To ensure that this isn't a problem, simple copy the line and paste it into your MS-DOS Command Prompt. After you have committed that line, type the following:
echo %BaseName%
You should end up with something like this "yyyyMMdd_HHmmss.ss". Then on the second command, it will use this string in the move command to get the EXE moved to a different directory (Trash), but it will change the filename from "app.exe.locked" to
"yyyyMMdd_HHmmss.ss.locked". In this manner, there will never be a naming conflict! This follows for the 3rd line as well.
Since I have done this, I've been able to compile to my hearts content (Barring any "real" problems). So, to re-cap, I followed these steps:
- I centralized the output of all of my projects to a single folder (personal preference really)
- In the Pre-Build I:
- Create a string I can use for filenames based on the exact Date/Time in a format that can be used by the Filesystem
- Move my app.exe.Locked file to a new directory using Unique Filename
- Move my app.exe file to a new directory using Unique Filename.
- Smile and shake my head knowing that this hack might not work after the next SP.
Happy Coding and good luck to all of you. All the suggestions on this thread didn't fix me, but the definitely got me on my way. Thanks for all of the help!
Will
