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280

answers:

1

The problem: I find myself using Visual Studio's feature "right click -> find all references" a lot, but often times I need to switch between several results which cannot be easily done in Visual Studio.

I'm thinking something like PHP's Xref utility that generates a cross reference documentation from source code. Is there anything similar for C#?

Other suggestions to solve this problem are also appreciated.

Update: I found Total .NET Xref, but unfortunately it does not support VS2005. Still looking...

Update 2: It seems such tool does not exist (based on my own search and community response), and ReSharper would be the ideal choice for such thing at this moment.

+2  A: 

ReSharper and CodeRush/RefactorPro integrate with visual studio and provide better visibility for finding usages and references. They each have a two-panel display with a tree structure of references on the top with code on the bottom.

The ReSharper version has tabs so you can easily switch between several different references - visual studio does not give you a way to have more than one open.

The CodeRush one has a handy feature that it can 'live sync' references as you work so whenever you click on a symbol, class, method, etc you can see all of the references in the window. You can turn this off and have it update 'on command' where it only tracks the references you choose.

Each of these tools have free trial versions you can try.

Maggie
+1 for ReSharper!
TrueWill
I tried ReSharper, but it is slowing the IDE to a point of intolerable (partly due to we have fairly large projects). I'll give the other tool a try though. Thanks for the suggestion!
Bill Yang
Do you have enough memory? You may have enough memory for "X", but not enough for "X + ReSharper". Also, turn off solution-wide analysis and see if that makes it better.
John Saunders
@John, I did not do everything to improve ReSharper performance(like turning off solution-wide analysis), but a colleague is a long time ReSharper user, when we work on his machine together, there are constant short freezes (less a second) and occasional longer freezes. @Maggie, I tried CodeRush, it unfortunately does not save search results, but the search is fast (almost instaneous). If there is no real Xref tools, this might be best for me.
Bill Yang
I actually use both tools at the moment as each has their strengths - I'm still tweaking settings where they overlap. My current project is not as large as your sounds so turning off parts where the tool compiles and analyses in the background may help. I am using the latest releases of both tools.
Maggie
@Bill: It's always bad to make assumptions. Your symptoms are consistent with several different problems, some of which are not problems with ReSharper. For instance, anti-virus could be scanning the files RS uses to cache information about your code. This would cause brief pauses, frequently.
John Saunders