Visual Studio 2008 designers screw up on large VB projects.

Question

We have 3 developers all using the same version (VS 2008 SP1) and we all use large VB projects (windows forms). From time to time, the IDE will have all sorts of issues such as locking up, crashing, and even not being able to drag a form object around or it will just instantly disappear.

On the largest of our projects (which is actually 5 projects in one solution file), a couple people here can only rebuild the project for testing 2 - 3 times before they have to close the studio and reopen it.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does this happen with large C# projects?

Answer 1

I have heard of people having this issue, however, I have never had an issue at all myself.

I have heard that a number of people trace the issues back to the use of ReSharper as the primary cause.

Answer 2

Yes, I experience this all the time! It has gotten better in 2008, if you can believe it.

I usually find that the reason has to do with an exception in my own code. The UI might bring in a custom control that does not behave well in design mode, causing the problem.

Sometimes, I will bring up a second execution of VS2008 and attach the debugger to the first execution of VS. Then, I can debug my own code as it is being run in the designer of the first instance. Often, an exception is thrown and I can fix my code to play better in the designer.

In other circumstances, I have no idea why it happens.

Answer 3

The most common problem I've had that causes the designer to crash is when I create a form where the only constructors require parameters.

To alleviate that, when I need the form only to be instantiated with parameters, I create a private parameterless constructor that the designer can use but which the form's consumers won't see.

Answer 4

I have personally experienced all sorts of designer wickedness with VS2008 sp1. I uninstalled the service pack to return stability to my dev environment. This is an unfortunate answer, but give it a try.