"Microsoft.CSharp.targets" was not found

While working with a manually merged project file and attempting to complete the upgrade from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008 the conversion process failed.

After the conversion failure, Visual Studio became unresponsive, and the build for the solution failed. To resolve the problem, I attempted to unload and reload the solution.

When loading the message appeared: "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" was not found."

A quick check found that the target build file for C# had been removed from the framework folder, without the build definition file for C#, projects cannot seem to reload (let alone build correctly).

To resolve the problem, I copied the file from another machine into the folder, and reloaded the solution.

Problem solved.

Resources:
MSBuild .Targets Files
TFS Build Problem - Custom Property not getting passed to recursive imports.

PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008

For anyone working with Visual Studio 2008 out there, you would benefit by installing PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008 . PowerCommands is an an extension to the Visual Studio IDE design to extend the functionality, and provide additional features to complete tasks.

The product is available from code.mdsn.microsoft.com, and is available via the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)

My favorite command is Collapse Projects

The description from the PowerCommands home page describes it as: "This command collapses a project or projects in the Solution Explorer starting from the root selected node. Collapsing a project can increase the readability of the solution. This command can be executed from three different places: solution, solution folders and project nodes respectively."

However the commands "Close All" and the "Remove and Sort Usings" features are a close second and third.

At the time of this post, the current version was 1.1. You can get a complete list of functionality in the product from the ReadMe file here.

Here is the link to PowerCommands on http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/:

Power Commands on MSDN

Xml Comments and GhostDoc

If your working with Sandcastle, or just writing well documented sourcecode , then your familiar with Xml Comments. If not, then I would suggest starting to learn. You can get some great information here.

If your already using Xml Comments, I would recommend taking a few minutes and trying out GhostDoc from Roland Weigelt.

According to the GhostDoc site, the product is described as GhostDoc is a free add-in for Visual Studio that automatically generates XML documentation comments for C#. Either by using existing documentation inheritedfrom base classes or implemented interfaces, or by deducing comments fromname and type of e.g. methods, properties or parameters.

GhostDoc allows for automation of the generation of the Xml comment syntax, and also attempts to complete the comment itself, allowing you to skip most of the redundant entry that drives so many developers away from proper documentation.

You can get more information on GhostDoc, or download the install for Visual Studio here:
http://www.roland-weigelt.de/ghostdoc/

I use it, it's a great tool, and it's free.

Code Snippet Manager in Visual Studio

I am using Visual Studio 2008, and had some trouble locating the Code Snippet Manager in Visual Studio .Don't worry, the functionality is there, and snippets work fine (my version does not have the menu item by default).

You can use the hot key command to open the menu. By default the hotkey command is Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B to open the Code Snippet Manager.

Or you can add the command to the menu via the Tools/Customize, select the Commands Tab, then Tools Menu, and add the Code Snippets Manager.