Problem with visual studio intellisense about saltarellecompiler

[erik-kallen]

Interesting.

I will look into it. For the time being, to get your intellisense back, I suggest downloading an evaluation version of ReSharper 7 (which does get it right, that's why I haven't noticed the problem myself).

[volkanceylan]

When i tried to install Santarelle runtimes into GAC, it gave an error as DLL's are targeted for a newer framework. I checked in ILSPY and it also shows your mscorlib runtime version as 4.0. When i set project to 4.0 runtime, this time, it complains about System.dll reference missing etc. Don't know if it is related, but might help.

[erik-kallen]

You can't install saltarelle runtimes into the GAC, since they use a non-standard mscorlib.

And the Saltarelle mscorlib version is 1.1.

[erik-kallen]

Visual Studio seems to have a "feature" that makes intellisense for mscorlib unusable unless the standard Microsoft.CSharp.targets is included in the build.

Actually, it seems that the rule is that the Csc task must be invoked with the correct arguments at the correct point in the build (where the exact definition of correct is unknown to me, but just inserting a dummy call does not help).

For the time being, I recommend using ReSharper, which doesn't have this "feature", and I guess I'll have to contact the VS team at Microsoft to get help with the issue.

[erik-kallen]

MSDN forum link: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharpide/thread/cdcb3eac-8044-446e-b585-834e8d8214f8

[volkanceylan]

By some trial and error, i changed your .targets file as below, and it works now:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

    <UsingTask AssemblyFile="SCTask.dll" TaskName="SCTask"/>

    <PropertyGroup>
        <MSBuildAllProjects>$(MSBuildAllProjects);$(MSBuildThisFileFullPath)</MSBuildAllProjects>
        <DefaultLanguageSourceExtension>.cs</DefaultLanguageSourceExtension>
        <Language>C#</Language>
            <EmitDebugInformation>false</EmitDebugInformation>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(DebugType)'=='pdbonly' Or '$(DebugType)'=='full'">
            <EmitDebugInformation>true</EmitDebugInformation>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <IntermediateScript Include="$(IntermediateOutputPath)$(TargetName).js" Condition="'@(IntermediateScript)'==''"/>
    </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="AfterCompile" DependsOnTargets="$(CoreCompile)" 
          Inputs="$(MSBuildAllProjects);
                $(AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile);
                @(Compile);
                @(ReferencePath);
                @(CustomAdditionalCompileInputs)"
        Outputs="@(DocFileItem);
                 @(IntermediateScript);
                 @(IntermediateAssembly);
                 @(CustomAdditionalCompileOutputs)"
        Returns="">
      <SCTask  AdditionalLibPaths="$(AdditionalLibPaths)"
               DefineConstants="$(DefineConstants)"
               DisabledWarnings="$(NoWarn)"
               DocumentationFile="@(DocFileItem)"
               EmitDebugInformation="$(EmitDebugInformation)"
               KeyContainer="$(KeyContainerName)"
               KeyFile="$(KeyOriginatorFile)"
               OutputAssembly="@(IntermediateAssembly)"
               OutputScript="@(IntermediateScript)"
               References="@(ReferencePath);@(ReferenceDependencyPaths)"
               Sources="@(Compile)"
               TreatWarningsAsErrors="$(TreatWarningsAsErrors)"
               WarningLevel="$(WarningLevel)"
               WarningsAsErrors="$(WarningsAsErrors)"
               WarningsNotAsErrors="$(WarningsNotAsErrors)"
     />
  </Target>

  <Target Name="CopyFilesToOutputDirectory">
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(IntermediateAssembly)" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(IntermediateScript)" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
  </Target>  
</Project>

[erik-kallen]

Unfortunately this compiles the code twice, which is something I want to avoid if at all possible.

The VS behaviour seems to be something like:
Intellisense starts working for a file the first time that file is compiled with the Csc task producing the @(IntermediateAssembly) output.
Once Intellisense has started working for a file, it will keep working forever.
Just because one file in the project works, it doesn't mean that other files in the same project will. Each file has to be a source to the Csc task before that file will start working.
Restarting VS does not cause Intellisense to stop working for files it is already working for.

I would LOVE to see the VS code behind this behavior.

[volkanceylan]

I don't know anything about how these .targets files or Visual Studio build process works.

I took a look at how ScriptSharp and VannatechBlade .targets file is written, and they both use AfterCompile target.

Not sure why your SCTask compiles code again? AFAIK, ScriptSharp's ScriptCompilerTask doesn't compile code. Just reuses already compiled IntermediateAssembly (maybe not even that), source, and project files.

[erik-kallen]

I do that for two reasons:

1. I want the task to be self-contained, so the build doesn't rely on third-party task to also be called (passing invalid code to the script compilation will give you internal errors), and
2. I had the idea (now abandoned or at least put on hold) that the compiler should annotate the output assembly with eg. [ScriptName] attributes to ensure that overload resolution works across assemblies (don't worry, it still does work, I decided to use a deterministic naming algorithm instead).

Obviously neither of these reasons are more important than working VS IntelliSense, so I should change this (I will add an extra task parameter to the SCTask that tells it not to build the output assembly). But it was a VS feature that was hard to foresee.