Archive for the ‘Subversion’ Category.

Subversion operations on Visual Studio 2008 solution take forever

Well, not literally, just a very very long time.

Our Subversion source repository has grown to be quite sizable over the past couple of years. We have always used TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN to tame this beast, and it has usually not let us down.

However, a while back, something bad happened to a VS 2008 solution in the repository. When launching the solution, the refresh of the version control status indicators next to the files in the solution take a very long time to appear and/or refresh, and any kind of operation done on the solution file (such as update, repo browser, etc.) goes back to the root of the whole repository instead of working with the folder where the solution file lives.

Strangely enough, operations done on any of the components inside of the solution does the right thing. In other words, if I update a project in the solution from Visual Studio, it works lightning fast.

I finally got tired of wasting 2 to 10 minutes per operation on the solution and studied this problem by comparing this malfunctioning solution with one that appears to do what you would expect it to. One thing I noticed right away was that the speedy project contained the following lines at the bottom of the solution file (opened in your favorite text editor, of course):

    GlobalSection(ExtensibilityGlobals) = postSolution
        VisualSVNWorkingCopyRoot =
    EndGlobalSection
    GlobalSection(SubversionScc) = preSolution
        Svn-Managed = True
        Manager = AnkhSVN - Subversion Support for Visual Studio
    EndGlobalSection

I added these lines to the bottom of my sluggish solution file and re-opened it, and I now predict explosive advances in my productivity. Or at least more time for tweeting.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to remove these disabled “DSL Tools”, “Text Transformation”, “Workflow”, and “ANTS 4” menu items from my VS 2008. Anyone have any ideas? (EDIT: John Boker has found the solution, see the comments.)

EDIT, PART DEUX: I tried this fix on a different existing Visual Studio project on 9/23/2009, and of course it didn’t work. I studied the problem a bit more, and found that if I added the GlobalSection(SubversionSCC) section that I have already inserted into the code block above, it did the trick for me. (Even though I am not actually using AnkhSVN, I am using TortoiseSVN, so I am guessing the Manager line is not important. However, I have left it in there for completeness.)