Open a file in Visual Studio at a specific line number

Question

Greetings,

I have a utility (grep) that gives me a list of filenames and a line numbers. After I have determined that devenv is the correct program to open a file, I would like to ensure that it is opened at the indicated line number. In emacs, this would be:

emacs +140 filename.c

I have found nothing like this for Visual Studio (devenv). The closest I have found is:

devenv /Command "Edit.Goto 140" filename.c

However, this makes a separate instance of devenv for each such file. I would rather have something that uses an existing instance.

These variations re-use an existing devenv, but don't go to the indicated line:

devenv /Command "Edit.Goto 140" /Edit filename.c
devenv /Command  /Edit filename.c "Edit.Goto 140"

I thought that using multiple "/Command" arguments might do it, but I probably don't have the right one because I either get errors or no response at all (other than opening an empty devenv).

I could write a special macro for devenv, but I would like this utility to be used by others that don't have that macro. And I'm not clear on how to invoke that macro with the "/Command" option.

Any ideas?

---

Well, it doesn't appear that there is a way to do this as I wanted. Since it looks like I'll need to have dedicated code to start up Visual Studio, I've decided to use EnvDTE as shown below. Hopefully this will help somebody else.

#include "stdafx.h"

//-----------------------------------------------------------------------
// This code is blatently stolen from http://benbuck.com/archives/13
//
// This is from the blog of somebody called "BenBuck" for which there
// seems to be no information.
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------

// import EnvDTE
#pragma warning(disable : 4278)
#pragma warning(disable : 4146)
#import "libid:80cc9f66-e7d8-4ddd-85b6-d9e6cd0e93e2" version("8.0") lcid("0") raw_interfaces_only named_guids
#pragma warning(default : 4146)
#pragma warning(default : 4278)

bool visual_studio_open_file(char const *filename, unsigned int line)
{
    HRESULT result;
    CLSID clsid;
    result = ::CLSIDFromProgID(L"VisualStudio.DTE", &clsid);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComPtr<IUnknown> punk;
    result = ::GetActiveObject(clsid, NULL, &punk);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComPtr<EnvDTE::_DTE> DTE;
    DTE = punk;

    CComPtr<EnvDTE::ItemOperations> item_ops;
    result = DTE->get_ItemOperations(&item_ops);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComBSTR bstrFileName(filename);
    CComBSTR bstrKind(EnvDTE::vsViewKindTextView);
    CComPtr<EnvDTE::Window> window;
    result = item_ops->OpenFile(bstrFileName, bstrKind, &window);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComPtr<EnvDTE::Document> doc;
    result = DTE->get_ActiveDocument(&doc);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComPtr<IDispatch> selection_dispatch;
    result = doc->get_Selection(&selection_dispatch);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    CComPtr<EnvDTE::TextSelection> selection;
    result = selection_dispatch->QueryInterface(&selection);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    result = selection->GotoLine(line, TRUE);
    if (FAILED(result))
     return false;

    return true;
}

Answer 1

I can't figure out a way to do this with straight command-line options. It looks like you will have to write a macro for it. Supposedly, you can invoke them like so.

devenv /command "Macros.MyMacros.Module1.OpenFavoriteFiles"

So, you can probably create a macro that takes a filename and a line number, then opens the file and jumps to the proper place. But, I don't know that you can specify a same-instance flag somewhere, or not.

Answer 2

With VS2008 SP1, you can use the following command line to open a file at a specific line in an existing instance :

devenv /edit FILE_PATH /command "edit.goto FILE_LINE"

Source