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985

answers:

6

I have a solution with other 70 projects into it. My question is : How can I know where the project is used? I do not want to open all those 70 projects to verify the References one by one. How can I see which project use one project in particular?

Edit I do not want to do 1 by 1 search in XML or in the Reference in VS. I would like a quick way to do it.

A: 

The project files are in XML, so writing something to parse them should be no big deal. If you just want to find which projects reference particular other projects, "grep" would probably work well enough.

Mark Bessey
A: 

You could even use the search feature of Studio itself, if you are looking for a particular project. Search just the xml project files for that particular project. If you're trying to map out everything, this wouldn't work so well.

thursdaysgeek
+1  A: 

You could resort to using the Search feature in Windows itself.

Each of the projects has a file called *library_name*.csproj.FileListAbsolute.txt.

A quick windows search for the DLL I was looking for with *FileListAbsolute.txt as the filter yielded the results I wanted.

The FileListAbsolute.txt files list the DLLs and such for the particular projects. I did this for VS 2008, but I would guess it might be available for VS 2005 too.

itsmatt
Weird. I did Ctrl+F and Ctrl+Shift+F with "DataAccessWebService.csproj.FileListAbsolute.txt" without the quote and it found nothing. I am sure that I have typed the projectname correctly.
Daok
I used *Absolute.txt as the 'part of the file name' and MyClassLibrary.dll as the 'A word or phrase in the file' and found all the entries. They were in the obj subfolders for each project.
itsmatt
A: 

I will answer your question with a question: Why, oh God, why, do you have 70 projects in a single solution?

Alex Lyman
We have a big project split in different namespace. We have module, pluging, business logic, datamanipulation, dataaccess, persistance, etc... what is your problem with that?
Daok
No. I like that you have 70 projects -- I've had to maintain megalithic projects before, and multiple projects is always a delight. But, you can't segregate it out into multiple solutions?
Alex Lyman
+3  A: 

There's a pretty cool codeplex project that creates dependecy visualizations that I've used before. Although, with 70 projects, you probably won't be able to read it very well unless you only have a few dependencies per project.

Anyway, it's still worth checking out-- you could probably even repurpose some of the source code to just output the depenecies to a list.

It at Dependecy Visualizer Codeplex Project

Kevin Dostalek
I right click the solution and See the "Project Dependencie" I see a windows appear but when I press oK nothing is generated...
Daok
Look for a folder named Dependencies in the same dir.. that's where it outputs the png and svg
Kevin Dostalek
They are nothing generated.
Daok
Strange.. I dunno. I had problems on my x64 machine until this latest build. Could be a permissions or read-only in the folder kind of thing maybe? Should probably post an issue on the codeplex tracker.. it is a pretty active project.
Kevin Dostalek
A: 

Visual Ndepend is a tool that I am trying at this moment and look promising with my original question.

Daok