Build requirements

• Visual Studio 2013 AND Visual Studio 2015
• Run the following from Windows Command prompt (cmd.exe) to restore nugets. Just restoring in Visual Studio isn't enough, as the build definition already depends on one of the nugets (ANTLR).
• Don't upgrade the solution to Visual Studio 2015. The C++ is not compatible yet.

cd vowpalwabbit
.nuget\NuGet.exe restore vw.sln

Optional

• Azure SDK
• WiX to edit the installer
• To run the tests you need to install Java Runtime
• To avoid space/tab/.. reformatting, install Editor Config VS Plugin

Azure Unit Tests

Create required Azure resources using

Create vw_azure.config in your local checkout folder (or any parent of it):

  storageConnectionString = <storage account key>
  inputEventHubConnectionString = <eventhub connection string>
  evalEventHubConnectionString = <eventhub connection string>

Run Visual Studio as Administrator (elevated) as the Azure hosted trainer creates and writes to performance counters.

Random tips

• Select x64 platform (Configuration Manager \ Active solution platfrom)
• Select x64 as test platform (Test \ Test settings \ Default Processor Architecture)
• Don't trust the Visual Studio 2013 debugger on stack frames in C++/CLI. We observed bogus values. Moving to C++ or C# everything was correct.