Question

I use Visual Studio (C# Express 2008) occasionally to work with some vendor supplied C# code. I am looking to make my experience with VS more like my experience with Eclipse. I have become accustomed to the way Eclipse handles underlining errors (in java source). When I make an error in my code in Eclipse, it will be underlined right away, and if I fix it, the underline will disappear almost immediately, or at worst, when I save the file. In Visual Studio however, the underline remains until I next build the project.

Is there a setting somewhere I can change so that VS will build every time I save, or even as I am typing? Is this hard to do with C# because it is more complex in some way than Java? Do I need to find someone to buy me the full (non express) version? Also, what is the squiggly underline feature called? I fear this question may have been asked before but I don’t know the magic word to search for.

Answer 1

Do you have Visual C# 2008 Express Edition with SP1? SP1 added exactly this feature to Visual Studio 2008 Professional and Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

From the release notes:

This service pack adds a new Visual C# IDE feature that provides a richer set of error information about your code. Specifically, this feature presents the expression-level errors that occur in open files to you according to your code. These expression-level errors were previously reported only after a build operation.

From Scott Guthrie’s release notes:

The C# code editor now identifies and displays red squiggle errors for many semantic code issues that previously required an explicit compilation to identify. For example, if you try to declare and use an unknown type in the C# code-editor today you won’t see a compile error until you do a build. Now with SP1 you’ll see live red squiggle errors immediately (no explicit compile required):