Question about specific lines in a .DPROJ file

Question

I solved a problem, but I'm not sure why.

I have a Delphi (2007) project which, when I opened it, gave a very long delay (i.e., 2 full minutes) before the IDE became responsive.

I have other projects that are as large as this one, and there was no such delay. Finally I took a look inside the .DPROJ file, and found hundreds of entries like this one:

<None Include="ModelSupport_MyProjectName\Unit1\default.txaPackage" />
<None Include="ModelSupport_MyProjectName\Unit2\default.txaPackage" />
<None Include="ModelSupport_MyProjectName\Unit3\default.txaPackage" />

I deleted all of those lines, and now the huge delay is gone.

My question:

What is the purpose of these lines? Why did they create such a long delay? Did I do any harm by removing them? More generally, is there good documentation on the structure of the .DPROJ file format from Codegear / Embarcadero?

Thanks

Answer 1

These are Together files. To display your code as UML class diagram for example. I'm not sure but the delay could be from the Together packages loading or maybe the diagrams loading or updating.

There is no harm in removing them, unless you wanted to use the model support. Some refactorings also require them.

.dproj files are Microsoft msbuild files of which the structure is documented here, but there is not documentation of my knowledge of the Delphi specific use of msbuild there.