SolutionMania

Automatically Adding SVN Revision Numbers to Assemblies

Source code version control is one thing that no developer should ever live without. If you're working on some code that isn't in a version control system, stop what you're doing now and get yourself one!

There's no excuse - there are plenty of free ones available that are simple to install and use. My personal favourite is Subversion (SVN). The particular flavour I use is VisualSVN which has a simple server configuration system and a convenient Visual Studio plugin. If you're really new to version control, you could do a lot worse than to read the SVN book, too.

Exact revision numbers are a vital part of our quality control process. All bug reports are logged against a specific revision of our code. If a customer calls to report a bug we insist on having the exact revision number - 'Version 2.0.285'. Bug reported for 'Version 2' just aren't good enough and won't get logged in our bug list.

Visual Studio with Roaming Profiles

I have been having a problem with Visual Studio constantly reconfiguring itself on startup. Quite often, when launching the environment, I get this message...

"Microsoft Visual Studio is configuring the environment for first time use. This might take a few minutes."

True to its word, the message hangs around for a while before letting me get on with my work.