Visual Studio Linked Files Directory Structure

Question

I have two versions of a project. One for Silverlight and one for .NET. The SL project has the vast majority of the code base in it. I want to globally add all files from the SL project into the .NET version as linked files. I've managed to do so successfully like this in the csproj file for the .NET version:

<Compile Include="..\MyProj.Common.SL\**\*.cs" Exclude="..\MyProj.Common.SL\Properties\**">

Unfortunately, this adds all the files right to the root of my project... so I end up with a long unreadable list of linked files in the .NET project. I really really really don't want to have to maintain an entire duplicate directory structure by hand and deal with directory name changes and file name changes and whatnot.

So, is there any way to have Visual Studio preserve the directory structure when adding linked files in the wildcard manner above? Or is there at least a way of making it group all the linked files together under a directory in the .NET project like MyProj.Common.SL.Links?

The very closest I've come is to set the <Visible>false</Visible> under the <Compile> tag, which effectively removes the long unreadable list of 300+ files....but unfortunately this screws up Resharper, which no longer sees those files as valid and it goes crazy on all the projects that reference the .NET project. If I could figure out a way of making Resharper not get all messed up, that would be an acceptable solution too...

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think I would do this:

• Copy the existing project's <Compile> items, which presumably have e.g. Include="foo.cs" and Include="Folder\bar.cs"
• Paste them into the new project
• Search and replace <Compile Include="(.*?)" /> with <Compile Include="..\Other\$1" ><Link>$1</Link></Compile>

I don't know if I got the regular expression search and replace syntax exactly right, but the point is, you already have a good project, you should be able to cut, paste, regex-replace it to get the same set of files, only referenced from a different folder, and with the same directory structure.

You'll still have two .csproj's to maintain at this point, but this is also easily fixed. Now take this new list of compile items, and put it in a file named e.g. "Common.csproj" that just contains the property group with those compile items, and then have both projects <Import Include="..\Common.csproj" /> and not include any Compile items of their own.

Basically, a little manual labor to refactor the .csproj file for sharing once, and then I think you'll be set. I am not sure if this is the 'easiest' way to unblock you, but I think this sounds approximately like what you may want for an 'ideal' structure.

Answer 2

I think I found a way of getting this to work:

<Compile Include="..\MyProj.Common.SL\**\*.cs" Exclude="..\MyProj.Common.SL\Properties\**">
  <Link>MyProj.Common.SL.LinkedFiles\MyProj.Common.SL.LinkedFiles</Link>
</Compile>

It will create a MyProj.Common.SL.LinkedFiles folder and group all the linked files under that folder.