Displaying <![CDATA[]]> literally in XML while escaping end token.

While adding XML Code Snippets for WIX (Windows Installer XML), I had to write XML containing <![CDATA[Installed OR NETFRAMEWORK40FULL]]>.
Problem arises, where Visual Studio Code Snippets uses <![CDATA[your snippet code here]]> to store the code and it can’t have another <![CDATA[]]> inside it. So it was not accepting this:

<Code Language="xml">
<![CDATA[

<PropertyRef Id="$NETFRAMEWORK40FULL$"/>
  <Condition Message="This application requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Runtime in order to run. Please install the .NET Framework and then run this installer again." >
        <![CDATA[Installed OR $NETFRAMEWORK40FULL$]]>
</Condition>

]]>
</Code>

That is, the inner <![CDATA[Installed OR $NETFRAMEWORK40FULL$]]> became a bottleneck. So making story short, after Googling, I found very good discussion on this discussion on Stack Overflow Thread and then I was able to build proper XML by escaping ]]>. Here is my solved snippet code:

    <Code Language="xml">    
      <![CDATA[<PropertyRef Id="$NETFRAMEWORK40FULL$"/>
      <Condition Message="This application requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Runtime in order to run. Please install the .NET Framework and then run this installer again." >
          <![CDATA[Installed OR $NETFRAMEWORK40FULL$]]]]><![CDATA[>
       </Condition>]]>      
    </Code>

See the breaking code into chunks and put in multiple uses of <![CDATA[]]>… Do read Escaping CDATA end token for more info.

Try, Catch, Retry with DTE2 interface.

I had a task to create multiple solutions while adding projects into them by parsing a list file containing the path and names of solutions and their related projects. So using C#, I started writing a utility consuming Visual Studio 2013 Automation Interface.

While creating the Com object of EnvDTE80.DTE2 it sometimes throwing exception with message:

The message filter indicated that the application is busy.

However, while debugging, on resuming 1 or 2 times, it went fine. So this makes me to find some Try Catch and Retry solution. After some googling, Here is the most basic way, I used to get rid of this problem:

EnvDTE80.DTE2 dte=null;
Solution4 solutionObject=null;
Console.WriteLine("Creating DTE Object...");
for (int r = 0; r < 5; r++)
{
  try
    {
     Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Tried {0} times", r));
     System.Type type = System.Type.GetTypeFromProgID("VisualStudio.DTE.12.0");
     //DTE2 dte2 = (DTE2)Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction.CreateObject("VisualStudio.DTE.12.0", "");
     Object obj = System.Activator.CreateInstance(type, true);
     dte = (EnvDTE80.DTE2)obj;
     solutionObject = (Solution4)dte.Solution;
     ConsoleWrite("Done", ConsoleColor.Cyan);
     break; //reaching here means, it was successful, so get out of loop
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
	 System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(2)); //let give a delay of 2 seconds
     if (r >= 4)
        throw; //So if it is not successful after 4 retries, throw the exception
    }
}