Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

Versions of Visual Studio

Visual C++ 6    = VC6 = _MSC_VER 1200
VS 2003 = = VS7 = VC7 = _MSC_VER 1300
VS 2005 = = VS8 = VC8 = _MSC_VER 1400
VS 2008 = = VS9 = VC9 = _MSC_VER 1500
VS 2010 = = VS10 =VC10= _MSC_VER 1600
VS 2012 = = VS12 =VC12= _MSC_VER 1700
VS 2013 = = VS13 =VC13= _MSC_VER 1800

Visual Studio 2013, .net 4.5.1, VS2013

MS releases Win8.1 to MSDN. #VS2013 MSBuild12 not in .net4.5.1 brings the C/C++ love! #stl #cpprestsdk #c99 #cpp11 C++14 #noatldll #gonative

— davehorner (@davehorner) September 10, 2013

Visual Studio 2010, .net 4.0

Visual Studio 2008, .net 3.5, sqlcompact

Web Resources

Formatting variables within the IDE

Compile problems relating to C++ code generation

dumpbin /directives somefile.obj

Native code deployment

Project/solution converters and tools

Plugins

Misc

Team Foundation

Team Foundation Server SDK

Addins

VS2008

MSBuild

Synchronize the Currently Open File with Solution Explorer

Changing the look and feel of Visual Studio

Navigating large projects in visual studio

namespace name 'TeamFoundation' does not exist in the namespace 'Microsoft'

Visual studio hotkeys

Ctrl+F12

Edit.GoToDeclaration

F12

Edit.GoToDefinition

Shift+F12

Edit.FindAllReferences

Ctrl+-

View.NavigateBackward

Ctrl+Shift+-

View.NavigateForward

Ctrl+G

Edit.GoTo

Debug mode fill constants

• NoMansLand (0xFD) -
  The "NoMansLand" buffers on either side of the memory used by an application are currently filled with 0xFD.
• Freed blocks (0xDD)
  The freed blocks kept unused in the debug heap's linked list when the _CRTDBG_DELAY_FREE_MEM_DF flag is set are currently filled with 0xDD.
• New objects (0xCD)
  New objects are filled with 0xCD when they are allocated.
• 0xCC
  When the code is compiled with the /GZ option, uninitialized variables are automatically assigned to this value (at byte level).
• 0xAB (Allocated Block?) Memory allocated by LocalAlloc().
• 0xBAADF00D Bad Food Memory allocated by LocalAlloc() with LMEM_FIXED,but not yet written to.
• 0xFEEEFEEE OS fill heap memory, which was marked for usage, but wasn't allocated by HeapAlloc() or LocalAlloc(). Or that memory just has been freed by HeapFree().

Why are my debug builds so slow?

Image File Execution Options, and debugging

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\
;64-bit Windows
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\

Procdump via IFEO

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\notepad.exe]
"Debugger"="c:\\notepaddump.bat"

REM notepaddump.bat
procdump.exe /accepteula -ma -c 20 -s 5 -x %1 c:\notepad.dmp %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7

Replace notepad.exe the safer way

Debugging tips and tricks, WinDBG & friends

XP is done deprecated.