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Troubleshooting DotVVM for Visual Studio

If you encounter any problems with the DotVVM extension (e.g. IntelliSense not working), try to do the following steps.

IntelliSense is not working

1. Update to the latest version

In Visual Studio, choose the DotVVM / Check for Updates menu item and if newer version is available, install it.

2. Check that you are signed in

Some features from the commercial edition work only if you are signed in. In Visual Studio, choose the DotVVM / About and check whether your license is active and whether you are signed in.

3. Delete the component model cache

Occasionally, some things break in Visual Studio MEF component cache. If you see message boxes that DotVVM package didn't load correctly, shut down Visual Studio and delete the folder c:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v14.0\ComponentModelCache from Windows Explorer.

"DotVVM.Compiler.exe not found in the project"

If you open a DotVVM project in Visual Studio, sometimes you can see the yellow bar with the following error message:

'DotVVM.Compiler.exe' not found in the project YourProjectName!

Also, IntelliSense in DOTHTML files is broken, the directives are being underlined etc.

Visual Studio uses the DotVVM Compiler to read the settings in the DotvvmStartup file, or to precompile the DOTVVM views.

How to resolve the issue

The most common reason for this behavior is that Visual Studio cannot find the DotVVM binaries, because they are not present in the packages folder.

You can resolve this simply by building the solution. In the default settings, the Visual Studio runs the NuGet package restore before the build, and this operation downloads missing NuGet packages. The DotVVM package contains the DotVVM Compiler binary.

If the package restore doesn't help, you can look at the Output window in the Visual Studio. If you display the output from DotVVM, you'll see the exception the compiler has returned, and the stack trace. Maybe you can figure out what's wrong from the exception - it can be caused by something you have used in the DotvvmStartup.cs. Please, keep in mind, that the DotVVM for Visual Studio has to actually execute the DotvvmStartup.cs to be able to retrieve the configuration data.

Other issues

If the issue still occurs, contact us and provide us with description of the problem and screenshots.

See also