Multiple Rider instances

Oh each was in it's corresponding git root - but with say 3 sln-s open, call them git1/sln1 git2/sln2 git3/sln3 Rider's project window (pseudo-session) for git1/sln1 was seeing the changelist for git3/sln3 and happily committed it.

I didn't even realize that I was in 1 and not 3 (=> Rider needs the ability to color code windows that belong to the same pseudo-session).

I was even in a bit of panic since when I took the route via Git menu I've got "no changes to commit" but in Git panel all changes where there and it was happy to commit them even though they were in different repo/sln.

Later I realized that the root cause was that Rider doesn't have real sessions so it "sees" all changes in all repos that are currently open in any of pseudo-sessions. I was lucky that I didn't have any changes in other repos or it would have been one hell of a mess in Git panel.

That was the first time I started looking for a way to open several instances == processes and be absolutely sure that nothing is ever shared.

These are not your dad's repos guys :-) We have something like 300, separated into 10+ groups, probably half of that active/maintained and I hardly ever have less than 3 repos open. It's the organization arrangement that minimizes contention to virtually zero and conceptually follows microservices all the way to deployment.

This is on top of credentials and other parameters that need to be picked up from cmd shell environment for some enlistments/projects. A thing that's trivial in Visual Studio - you cd to different folder and run VS .exe. If you need more you D-click links that start cmd.exe with corresponding env script and then run .exe from there.

Windows: I've written a small powershell script, that opens solution with rider (if already opened it would switch the virtual desktop) and then move the window (and me) back to the virtual desktop I started from. Since I've always a shell somewhere on all virtual desktops (cmder) this was the easiest way for me: https://gist.github.com/Cyber1000/0570e39593dcbca935bf67c2352f3599

See the comments - You'll need:

• https://github.com/MScholtes/PSVirtualDesktop
• Turn on setting: Settings | Appearance and Behavior | Appearance | Always show full paths in window header option.
• Turn on setting: Settings | Appearance and Behavior | System Settings | Open project in new window

Maybe it helps someone ...

@Christoph Rüegg - You almost certainly have not been opening multiple instances of Rider. Jetbrains admits that it's not possible without elaborate workarounds, like having multiple installations of Rider (or any other Jetbrains IDE). They regularly point people to ancient tickets that they obviously have no intention of addressing (as you'll see being done in this discussion). The excuse is that Rider is really just IntelliJ and IntelliJ has never been able to run multiple instances and almost certainly never will be able to. If they had any intention of fixing the bug, they would have. And yes, it's a bug. Having everything in one instance means that if one window dies, they all die. This has caused problems for me in the past - one solution hangs, or is taking a long time to do something and all become unresponsive, so I can't even do work in other solutions while the busy one completes whatever it's doing. Presumably, when IntelliJ was first written, somebody foolishly made a "that will never happen" choice, assuming that no one would ever want two instances at the same time.

Hello Craigbarrett Za,

Thank you for expressing your concern, and it is unfortunate that you had such experience.

We would like to investigate the issue with an IDE being unresponsive and possibly find a solution for it. If you want it as well, please submit a detailed description of the issues you met with the steps to reproduce to our YouTrack: 

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/RIDER

Or to our support: 

https://rider-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us

We would be glad to check the issue closely. 

As for the initial issue, at the moment there are still no plans to work on multiple IDE instances. You may subscribe to the issue mentioned above in order to get news if anything is going to change. 

Thank you for understanding. Have a nice day!

go into the directory in the command prompt type “code .”  go to other projects directories type “code .” in them, this will open as many editors as you like all working on different projects in different directories. 

Simple, easy, do it.

Hello Eric,

I responded to you in this thread.

Have a nice day!