Visual Studio: Intellisense Problems and Linux Compatibility

Question

Two somewhat unrelated questions:

• Sometimes when I am working on a C++ project in Visual Studio 2008 Express, intellisense just does not want to "work" even though it really should. Auto completion box does not show and status bar says something along the lines of: "Intellisense: No further information is available".
  Sometimes it can be fixed by either rebuilding the solution or re-opening the solution, and sometimes even that doesn't work. Is this a known problem? If so: are there any known fixes?

• Is there any C++ IDE for Linux that has compatibility with MSVC++'s .sln files? I sometimes want to work on some project without having to go through the hassle of creating a new project and adding the files or manually creating a Make file.

edit:
To answer my own questions:

• Apparently there's no real fix other than to try and delete the .ncb file. Alternative would be a different IDE or to use a commercial package replacing intellisense.

• Code::Blocks seems to be able to open Visual Studio files. Or at least import them easily.

I posted these together as they both related to visual studio and I didn't deem them important enough to both deserve their own topic.

Do think the downvote is a little harsh though!

Answer 1

To answer your second question, there is no way to open .sln files in anything other than Visual Studio. They're a proprietary file type that (it seems) no one has any interest in writing a parser for.

You can however use Visual Studio to generate a makefile automatically. Just use the "Projects > Export Makefile" menu command in Visual Studio.

Answer 2

I've actually had some luckk opening .sln files using Monodevelop.

Answer 3

Intellisense failing is usually because of a "corrupt" ncb file. The usual solution is to delete it.

Reportly the next version VS 2010 will not be using ncb files anymore.

Answer 4

To avoid creating the Make files by hand try CMake