Class Designer - Switch into a read only mode.
I use TDD when developing my classes so don't want to use the class designer to generate code, however I do want to use it to view the relationships between classes.
I therefore wondered if there's an easy way to lock the class designer, telling it that I want to view my classes but don't have any intention of updating them. This would be useful because at the moment its very easy to accidentally make a change (such as deleting an association when you just meant to hide it) that breaks your code base.
Hi Colin,
That would be a very cool feature - great suggestion! Unfortunately, Class Designer doesn't support this in VS2005, but it would be useful if you enter this as a feature suggestion via our product feedback center (http://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=210) so that the team can consider this for future releases. Logging the suggestion this way allows other folks in the community to see the suggestion and vote for it as well.
Regards,
John Stallo
Actually, a colleague of mine suggested a workaround that may give you what you want. If you're working with source code control (like Visual Source Safe), you can set an option to be prompted to checkout a file when it is modified. With this turned on, anytime you do a gesture in Class Designer that will modify the code in your project, you'll be prompted by SCC and have the ability to cancel the operation and roll-back the edit. This will prevent you from making accidental changes to your source code via Class Designer.
Regards,
John Stallo
