Do I need the bin\debug\appName.vshost.exe and appName.vshost.manifest in my SVN code repository?

Question

I am building an application which is based on a sample application, written in C# on .NET 2, and is built on VS2008. This application is mostly a wrapper for a COM application. However I compile it in .NET 3.5.

The sample application came with the following files in it's bin\debug:

• appName.vshost.exe
• appName.vshost.exe.manifest

I noticed that I can delete the files and VS re-builds vshost.exe, and the vshost.manifest file appears with modification date the same as the deleted file as if VS has copied in from somewhere.

My question is, should I put this files in my SVN code repository?

Answer 1

Those two files you list implement the Visual Studio "hosting process". It is a hosted version of the CLR, designed to improve the debugging experience. It takes care of some security issues, the most visible side-effect is that it redirects output written with Console.WriteLine() in a GUI app to the Output window.

These files are not part of your project and do not get deleted when you use Build + Clean. In fact, you cannot delete the .exe file, it is always running while you've got the project opened in Visual Studio. You can disable the hosting process feature with Project + Properties, Debug, scroll down, "Enable the Visual Studio Hosting process" tick. There's no compelling reason to do so.

There's no need to check these in, Visual Studio re-generates them when you check-in a project and load it in VS. In general, you never need to check anything in from the bin subdirectory, its content is always re-created by building your project.