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Suggested Visual Studio 2013 Configuration

Alex Swindler edited this page Jul 14, 2014 · 23 revisions

WikiSuggested Visual Studio 2013 Configuration

This document recommends resources and modifications that may improve your experience or increase the utility of using Visual Studio 2013 with OpenStudio. Note that extensions are only supported by Visual Studio Professional or higher (they won't work with the Express Edition).

Strongly Recommended:

Debugger Visualizers

Copy the contents of the Visualizers directory to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers. This will allow you to easily inspect and debug Boost and Qt objects within Visual Studio.

Add Syntax Highlighting to .i Files

In TOOLS -> Options -> Text Editor -> File Extension, add the i extension with the Microsoft Visual C++ editor.

Configure C++ Formatting and Style

The following settings file will automatically configure Visual Studio's C++ formatting to match OpenStudio's Coding Standards. Go to Tools -> Import and Export Settings -> Import selected environment settings and select the following settings file: cpp-settings.vssettings

Optional:

Line Numbers

Enable TOOLS -> Options -> Text Editor -> All Languages -> Line numbers

Close File Shortcut

In TOOLS -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard, search for the File.Close command and add the Ctrl+W shortcut in the Text Editor context.

Kill Build Shortcut

The purpose behind this tweak is to instantly stop the build when you want it stopped, without hitting Cancel and waiting for long-running processes to finish

In TOOLS -> External Tools, add the following tool:

FIELD VALUE
Title: &Kill Build
Command: C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe
Arguments: /F /IM MSBuild.exe /T
Initial directory:

Then move it up in the list to the first position. Next, open TOOLS -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard, search for the Tools.ExternalCommand1 command and add the Ctrl+Shift+X global shortcut.

Extensions (minimum: Professional)

This adds syntax highlighting and IntelliSense support for CMake files. Enable Tools -> Options -> CMake Tools -> Commands In Lowercase.

This adds syntax highlighting to Doxygen documentation.

This allows you to view, run, and track test results from all OpenStudio tests directly in Visual Studio. Be sure to open Test -> Windows -> Test Explorer.

This extension adds a large number of useful features, including highlighting project errors in the solution explorer, filtering the solution explorer, scrollbar markers to help find related code, middle-click scrolling, fixing mixed tabs and spaces, aligning assignments, and much more.

This will highlight potential spelling mistakes in code strings and comments. Import this user dictionary to avoid false positives in OpenStudio code: OSDictionary.dic

TOOLS -> Spell Checker -> Edit Configuration -> User Dictionary -> Import

This extension also adds a large number of useful features, including coloring output window text color, showing a build summary, changing the window title to reflect the current Git branch, keeping documents open when reloading projects, canceling the build when the first project fails, and more.