08 Dec 09 VSeWSS: Value does not fall within the expected range.
On occasion, particularly if you’re moving files around or working on the structure of your project inside Visual Studio 2008, you’ll try to deploy your SharePoint project using VSeWSS 1.3 (March 2009 CTP) and get the following error:
Value does not fall within the expected range.
It’s cryptic and unhelpful. What value? What expected range? Experience has taught me that VSeWSS can only be deblogged, not debugged.
Anyway, this error usually means there is a file listed in the solution (as in WSP solution, not Visual Studio solution) manifest that doesn’t exist on the filesystem. Maybe SVN sucks (it does), or maybe you clicked the wrong button. Head down that path and you’ll likely find the problem.
A dead obvious giveaway is shown in this image. The little ‘hazard’ icon indicates a file included in the project is missing from the filesystem.
Tags: SharePoint, visual studio, VSeWSS
29 Jan 09 Visual Studio is a Pretender!
Can I just rant at you for a minute, gentle reader?
The editor in Visual Studio is from the stone ages. Really – it’s retarded (I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense – it really is retarded).
Sure, it does syntax highlighting, but really….so do the little code-paste tools like pastebin, and those little tools highlight for dozens of languages, so color me unimpressed.
Intellisense? Yup – very nifty, very advanced – oh, wait! Lisp environments have been doing “intellisense” for years decades.
What else….let’s see….feature or failure?
| Visual Studio characteristic | Feature/Failure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| consistency of indentation | FAIL | ever tried to use another editor to open files authored in Visual Studio? |
| efficient keyboard shortcuts | FAIL | the most often used shortcuts (navigation in text, for example) require me to move my hand off the home row |
| automatic indentation | FAIL | Are you kidding? Only if you happen to be typing in a magical combination of keystrokes that Microsoft decided was the one true way to type will auto-indentation be convenient. |
These are just some very basic, fundamental things, and this list could go on – indeed, I might come back and add to it as I become more proficient with Visual Studio. As an experienced Emacs user, it’s quite painful. I tried to use the Emacs keyboard mode, but it was even more maddening than the other modes – they get the keystrokes wrong, and even when they get them right, they don’t work correctly! C-k is supposed to kill a line, but you have to type ‘k’ twice for the kill to happen, and if you try to yank it back in using C-y, you get the killed line twice! M-q doesn’t work, you don’t get registers, typing on top of a highlighted region doesn’t replace, it appends, and ‘C-x b’ doesn’t switch tabs in the editor.
For all the wonders of a modern IDE, can we just please, please have an editor that’s advanced past 1985?
Tags: programming, visual studio
