Visual Studio 2010 Crashing after saving .scss file

I've been keeping up with the nightly builds trying to make this problem go away, but can't seem to lick it. Last build installed (March 12) and it's still an issue. I'm sure I have some bad CSS in my file somewhere but I'm having trouble tracking it down given that every time I save the file, my VS crashes.

Suggestions?

Hmmm. Well, tried one thing and it seemed to fix my problem.

I deleted the existing .scss file (after copying it's contents of course). I then when through the VS Add process and selected the scss file template.

Once I did this, everything worked again.

I started by saving the empty file and WB generated my css and min.css files as expected. I then started adding small bits of css that I thought were likely well-formed and saved. Each chunk I put in there worked as expected.

By the time I got to the end (added the css back in about 5 saves) everything worked as expected.

Lesson? Start with a current scss template if you run in to VS Crashing.

Having same issue with VS 2010. My scss is valid in my case though. What I have found is that the .css and the .min.css are randomly getting their read-only attributes set. I know I'm not setting it to read-only nor anything else on my machine, so something in Work Bench is doing it and then it crashes because it cannot save the file. The code needs to be re-written to always overwrite read-only files.

Web Workbench never sets the read-only bit. Are you using a source-control system that uses the read-only flag to mean 'not checked out' such as SourceSafe or Team Foundation? If so, that may be the culprit, although we do check out the .css and .min.css files before updating them.

I do use VSTS. So what can be done to resolve this?

We did have a bug that related to a behaviour where we excluded the .css file if a compile failed, then re-included it when the compile succeeded; some users found that TFS could crash Visual Studio in this scenario because it didn't like us repeatedly removing files and adding them back. We have since changed this behaviour so that we always generate the files, and we believe this has resolved the TFS crash issue.

Could you check the version number in Extension Manager? If your build number is less than 19982, try updating and see if that helps. If it is more recent than 19982, let us know, and we'll send you info about how to create a diagnostic log that we can use to try to track down the problem. Thanks!

Ah, ok. I didn't know this program was updated so frequently. I did have a lower version from Feb and just installed the latest. I'll report back if this fixed it or is still having the issue. Thanks!

I'm still getting this problem and I have build 20067. However, Visual Studio doesn't crash on the first save. Usually, it'll crash on the fourth save.

Are you getting compiler errors? Does the problem still occur if all the compiles are successful? What source control are you using? Are you in a normal project or a Web Site pseudo-project?

Can you run Visual Studio with the /log switch (devenv /log from a VS2010 command prompt), trigger the crash and post the %appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ActivityLog.xml file please? Thanks!

There are no compiler errors. The problem still occurs after all compiles are successful. It's a normal Web Application.

Attached is the ActivityLog.xml after simply recreating a crash and nothing else.

Furthermore, I've noticed that it will crash reliably using scss file I've also attached.

I hope this helps,

Thanks for the extra info. Unfortunately I've been unable to reproduce the error using your file (and annoyingly VS hasn't written the crash details to the ActivityLog.xml).

This is a bit of a long shot, but would you be willing to try capturing the exception detail in a debugger for us? To do this:

• Start up a second instance of Visual Studio (don't open any projects or files in this one)
• Choose Debug > Attach to Process
• Choose the VS instance where you're using Web Workbench
• Switch to the VS instance where you're using Web Workbench
• Trigger the crash

If we're lucky, there will be an exception caught in the debugging instance of VS, and you'll be able to grab the message and stack trace. If it is a TargetInvocationException and has an InnerException it would be very helpful to see that too! (Some crashes in VS may not be catchable this way, though, so you may not get anything out of it.) Thanks for your help in resolving this!

I get a System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException saying, "{"There is already a link to 'D:\Work\#####\Src\Interface\Common\Styles\Colors.css'. A project cannot have more than one link to the same file."}"

The stack trace is attached.

That's great info -- I think we will be able to get you a fix for this shortly. Thanks for taking the time to help us track this down!

Could you give the following build a go and let us know whether it improves matters?

http://assets.mindscape.co.nz/Mindscape.WebWorkbench.Integration.10.vsix

Thanks!

The build you gave me did not work.

One more thing that may help: the scss file that I'm saving is a symbolic link to a scss file in another project. Both projects are in the same solution.

Hmm, still can't repro. Does your project also contain link to the generated colors.css file in the other project perhaps? Could you post both .csproj files? Thanks!

I can't send the .csproj files for confidentiality reasons. However, I have to redact my previous comment about the file being a symbolic link to a file in another project. It's a symbolic to a file that is in the file structure and not in the solution.

Moreover, I got a previous build (19557), and that seems to be working.

Thanks for the extra info. When you say a symbolic link to a file that is in the file structure and not in the solution, do you mean an OS symlink or a Visual Studio "add file as link" link?

Also, does your project also contain a link to a colors.css file?

It's a Visual Studio, "add file as link".

There is a colors.css file, because it was previously generated. Beyond that there is no other colors.css file.