Visual Studio - General Issues
- The Visual Studio 2017 option
Lightweight Solution Load is not supported for COBOL. It must not be used with solutions that contain COBOL projects as it could result in problems with building the projects properly. See the Visual Studio help for instructions about how to switch this feature off, if it is enabled.
- Do not use the Startup object in the Application properties page to set the main program. The startup object must be the first static method in a class specified using the ILMAIN directive.
- The use of drag and drop for adding large numbers of files or folders is not recommended, as the IDE may become unresponsive while the files are imported.
To add files to your projects, use either one of the following options as appropriate –
File > Create Project From Existing Code or, in Solution Explorer,
Add Existing Files,
Add Existing COBOL Files context menu commands at project level.
- You need a trial or full license for
Enterprise Developer to successfully run and debug COBOL Web site projects. If you have a free Personal Edition license, you receive an error: "System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." when you run or debug the Web site.
- When trying to rebuild a project that includes a
filename.xaml file, you might receive a build error that the project output could not be deleted. A possible cause for this might be a third party application, such as the real time scanner of your antivirus software, locking the file. To work around this problem, instead of a rebuild, perform a build.
- When adding a bitmap or an icon to a WPF COBOL project, the
Build Action for the resource is set to
None by default. In order to include the resource in the built output, you need to manually set its
Build Action to
Resource.
- When you perform a search in the IDE for copybooks that your programs depend upon, if you have not specified that an extension is a copybook in
Tools > Options > Text Editor > Micro Focus COBOL > Advanced, the IDE examines only the
Additional directives field on the
COBOL tab in the project's properties, for COPYEXT. It does not check COBOL.DIR and the files' properties. To work around this restriction, ensure the extension has been added to the
Copybook extensions option in
Tools > Options > Text Editor > Micro Focus COBOL > Advanced.
- The multi-output project template has the following limitations:
- Adding managed resources such as classes, WinForms, resources, Service References, Web References is not supported. You need to create these in a separate managed project and reference that project from within the Procedural Multi-Output project.
- The programs generated from the procedural multi-output project cannot be referenced from other managed projects, nor can they be referenced using object COBOL syntax. However, a multi-output project supports adding references to other types of managed projects.
