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Running two Visual Studio 2008 configurations side-by-side

  • 아티클

Recently I’ve come across a requirement to easily switch between two Visual Studio 2008 configurations. I might need these two configurations open at the same time (so can’t just manually edit settings in Tools->Options), and don’t want any lengthy scripts, log on/log off activities, or virtualisation involved... mainly because each of those adds effort and is therefore a possible blocker to adoption.

One solution seemed to be using the “RunAs” command, and to configure each user’s settings differently. But I have seen issues with using RunAs – for example, a TFS installation with a customer failed a number of times and we couldn’t work out why (and never did), but logging on instead of using RunAs solved the issue. It can also take a while to do the logon before starting the executable. So I’m a little cautious of recommending it.

After a couple of internal conversations around solutions the Visual Studio SDK was discussed, which suddenly reminded me of the “Experimental Hive”. This is just another place in the Registry that Visual Studio can be instructed to load settings from instead of the usual place, and is generally used when testing customisations to Visual Studio (e.g. Domain Specific Languages) that might cause it to fail – so you don’t want to corrupt your main VS install.

It occurred to me that this is pretty much exactly what I’m after! Two sets of Visual Studio settings that can be used independently without machine virtualisation, user virtualisation, or anything else that might seem like overkill.

Solution

To get this working is quite simple. First, you need the VsRegEx.exe command from the Visual Studio 2008 SDK 1.1. Next, change into the directory it is in (I found it under “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK\VisualStudioIntegration\Tools\Bin”, but it may differ on your machine), and run the following command;

vsregex GetOrig 9.0 Test ranu

I’ve chosen to call my hive “Test”, but you could call it something else. This creates a new Registry hive under “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0Test” (alongside the usual “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0”) and file system storage under “%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0Test” (alongside the usual “%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0”).

Next, change to the directory that Visual Studio 2008’s “devenv.exe” command is stored. On my machine this is under “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE” – again, yours may differ. You can then start Visual Studio with the following command line;

devenv /RootSuffix Test /ranu

This starts VS using your new “Test” hive. You could even setup a shortcut to start this version of Visual Studio running off your different configuration.

The first time it starts Visual Studio will take longer than usual as it is effectively a new install. But don’t worry; next time it will be just as quick as what you’re used to.

You are now free to go into Tools->Options and change your settings in this Visual Studio instance, and they won’t affect your standard Visual Studio install (the one started with “devenv.exe”, or from the standard shortcuts).

Caveats

As always there are some caveats. I have this working, and it seems fine, but I haven’t been using it long term for development. When developing for Visual Studio developers often use this approach for testing the software they have written, but generally not for doing their day-to-day development work in VS. Therefore I’d recommend giving it a try and seeing if you notice any odd behaviour specific to your configuration (Note: personally I think this is pretty unlikely as this approach was designed for testing Visual Studio! But I’m just being cautious J)

The final thing to be aware of is the “run as a normal user” switch (“/ranu”) that is used above. You may need to do some configuration as an elevated administrative user to get Visual Studio working if you’re planning on running VS as an admin (there are some notes on the ranu docs here). The most common reason for running Visual Studio as an admin is if you’re testing web apps in a locally hosted IIS rather than the built in Visual Studio Development Web Server. I haven’t tested this stuff, so try it first if this matters to you.

If you do use this and find anything interesting, feel free to report back here using a comment.

Anyway, I hope that helps – and I hope it saves you some time!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2009
    I does indeed help. A lot. Great post.