WCF and ConfigurationErrorsException: This element is not currently assigned with any context.

This post by Zulfiqar Ahmed about the ConfigurationErrorsException when using Visual Studio saved my day.

This error suddently appeared when debugging a test case in Visual Studio and I didn't realize that this had something to do with activating the breakpoint on common language runtime exceptions.

WCF: custom tool error when adding a service reference in Visual Studio 2008

When adding a service reference in Visual Studio 2008, I came across a weird error. The reference was created successfully, but when I tried to build the project (a c# class library project), I always get a custom tool error ("the global element ... was defined in both ... and ..."). Thus I could not compile. Everything I tried didn't work. After reloading Visual Studio I got another error (Class ... is already defined in another namespace).

I finally solved this problem by deleting the Visual Studio project, creating a new project and adding the same service reference a second time.

I don't really know, what caused this error, but maybe it has something to do with changing the namespace or the service reference name after the first creation.

Solved WiX v3 - votive problems

I now solved my wix v3 votive problems with newer builds of wix. The problem was that from a specific wix build on, the standard configuration was changed from any cpu to x86 and any cpu was not longer supported. I used my old .wixproj without change in newer version without discovering any problems.

When I changed to 3.0.4220.0, the TFS source control was not working any longer for the wix project itself but also causes the automatic checkout of items in other project types to not work.

After changing all any cpu references to x86 in my .wixproject everything worked fine.

It's really weird that this caused the TFS source control to not work correctly anymore.

Btw this is reproducable, so it's not just a hazard that it works now.

Visual Studio Developer Clinic

If you ever get the chance to go to the Visual Studio Developer Clinic at Microsoft in Redmond use it! It's a fantastic event. You'll get to know a lot of people working on all the stuff, we're complaining about ;-) And they know that it's painful to work with it and they know really great hacks.

Creating custom project types with Visual Studio

Mike Hadlow gives a fairly good overview on how to build a custom project type for Visual Studio:
Code rant: Building a Visual Studio Custom Project Type

Please note, that at least in Visual Studio 2008 you'll have to create a project template to show your own project type under File -> New Project. You don't get any error if you don't do this, but your project type will not be shown.