Source control & web workbench settings

Hi,

I would like to manage my web workbench settings per project/solution/folder. How other similar tools handle this is by looping to find a .settings file that i can check in and it will be picked up by my other team mates.

I also miss the way chirpy handled combination. In chirpy you have a *.chirpy.config and it will render the combined files as sub project items.

<root
  xmlns="urn:ChirpyConfig"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="urn:ChirpyConfig http://www.weirdlover.com/chirpy/chirp.xsd">

<FileGroup Name="base.css">
    <File Path="base/tables.less" />
    <File Path="base/text-default-block.less"  />
    <File Path="base/text-links-inline.less"  />
    <File Path="base/media.less" />
    <File Path="base/forms.less" />
    <File Path="base/validation.less" />
    <File Path="base/tables.less" />
  </FileGroup>

Which is a nice way to check in combine configurations (chirpy also exposes combination settings on FileGroup i.e comple="false").

Where does workbench save its config settings now ?

If you are using a web application then the settings are stored in the project file, otherwise for web sites we create a WebWorkbench.mswwsettings file where the settings are stored. So both of these can be checked in.

You can certainly combine output with WW but we don't structure these in VS as sub project items as you may have more than one usage for a source file. Other than the structuring in VS is there anything else you are looking for with the combining?

Jeremy

Hey Jeremy,

I'd be happier if the settings had their own dedicated file and format across the board. Also with regards to the global settings in VS. In some solutions, projects i don't want web workbench to compile on the whole and on some i do.

Now I have to tell people how to configure their workbench when loading a project/solutions and when adding files to turn off compilation. This is not a scalable solution.

The approach many other vs extensions take is like described on the editorconfig http://editorconfig.org/ page with regards to settings. Ripping it lose from the VS options screen (which is still a great place to put the defaults in absense of a settings file) is a really great way to get settings into source control and share them painlessly with your teammates.

I dont follow the multiple usage argument, here's how it works in chirpy:

Chirpy also generates sub project items for the css, less, sass, coffee files themselves but additionally you can create config files that do the combining:

i.e base.css here is the result of combining the files i mentioned in my first post's code example.

I can reference the same file in multiple outputs and create as many *.chirp.config files as i see fit.

In general this file based approach wins over a massive dialog with many checkboxes and ambiguous links and per user settings in a vs options dialog. This view could still be the default editor for *.mwsettings files.

I also don't quite like that the settings are sometimes stored in the project file itself and sometimes in a separate file. If we always store the settings and configuration in a separate file we lose a lot of ambiguity already.

Also see the same suggestion for web essentials: http://webessentials.uservoice.com/forums/140520-general/suggestions/3146560-support-team-settings

Thanks for the feedback - we are not planning to make any changes to the combining behaviour for the time being but feel free to pop this into the feature requests to see if others want to vote this up in which case we could definitely be swayed into making a change :)

The suggestion around the settings is reasonable so I will have a think about switching this into using the .mswwsettings file only as there had been some general confusion about this of late with the wider use of the Compass features and people's desires to directly edit the settings in the settings file. Typically we enable this via an option first for some backwards compat so I will update this thread once I have added in an option for this.

Thanks!
Jeremyi

Cool getting the settings into a file would be great! it be nice if that file also allowed to override the global settings in the visual studio options dialog. That way i can check in all the correct settings for my teammates