Why does C# designer-generated code (like Form1.designer.cs) play havoc with Subversion?

Question

My workshop has recently switched to Subversion from SourceSafe, freeing us from automatic locks. This led to concurrent editing of the Forms, which is wonderful. But when m

Answer 1

Yep, Designer's random rearranging sure is irritating. Does Microsoft use their own tools? Does Microsoft look at what they check into version-control? It boggles the mind.

Our team's "solution" is to hand-edit the Designer files after we're done editing them, to put things back to where they were, so that the text-based diff is readable, and so concurrent changes can be merged sanely. Luckily, most of Visual Studio's rearranging is simple-minded, so this works.

Sadly, we've found that this step is necessary to verify correctness -- we've found cases where Designer silently removes things that are needed, leading to broken code. So this step has to be done in order to work around whatever data-destroying bugs lurk inside. Sigh.

Since Microsoft has a poor track record of fixing its bugs, the only solution may be to improve Mono's WinForms Designer so that it's ready for prime time.