Visual Studio delay between multiple startup projects?

Question

how to add some delay between startup projects in solution?

I want Client

Answer 1

Another simpler option for testing is to just delay the client if the debugger is attached like this:

if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
{
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000);
}

You might wrap that in an #if DEBUG block if you like. Anyway I think this should be the least amount of work :)

Answer 2

You can use Mutex locking to sync the two startup project.

Program 1 (StartUp Project 1):

    namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Text;
    using System.Threading;

    class Program1
    {
        private static  bool isNewMutexCreated = true;
        private static Mutex mutex;
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            mutex = new Mutex(true, "Global\\ConsoleApplication1", out isNewMutexCreated);
            AppDomain.CurrentDomain.ProcessExit += new EventHandler(CurrentDomain_ProcessExit);
            Console.WriteLine("Application1 executed on " + DateTime.Now.ToString());

            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        static void CurrentDomain_ProcessExit(Object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (isNewMutexCreated)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Mutex Released");
                mutex.ReleaseMutex();
            }
        }

    }
}

Program 2 (StartUp Project 2):

namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Text;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Threading;

    class Program2
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Mutex mutex = null;
            Thread.Sleep(5000);

            while (mutex == null)
            {
                try
                {
                    mutex = Mutex.OpenExisting("Global\\ConsoleApplication1");

                }
                catch (Exception)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Mutex not found on " + DateTime.Now.ToString());
                    Thread.Sleep(3000);
                }


            }
            Console.WriteLine("Application2 executed on " + DateTime.Now.ToString());
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

I would probably add a retry mechanism within the client. That way not only does it help in the "starting up from Visual Studio" case - it also helps if the server happens to be restarting while the real client connects. The fact that the server is on a faster machine doesn't mean the server will never need to restart, does it?

Indeed, you may well want to add this retry mechanism in such a way that the client can recover even if the server is restarted while it's connected. It depends on what the project is doing, of course.