Collapsing Related Files in Visual Studio

Question

In Visual Studio as most of you will have noticed that related file can be collapsed in to one. E.G.

• Form1.cs
  • Form1.Designer.cs

I'm creating a DAL library and will be splitting partial classes in to several files such as:

• SomeTableClass.cs
  • SomeTableClass.Generated.cs
  • SomeTableClass.SomethingElse.cs

Is there any way in Visual Studio to recognise these file are related to each other an create the collapsible effect?

Thanks

Tony

Answer 1

In my (VisualStudio 2005) system, they are stored in the registry under

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Projects\{E24C65DC-7377-472B-9ABA-BC803B73C61A}\RelatedFiles

For VisualStudio 2008, change the \8.0\ to \9.0\

Note, however, that the GUID in the middle refers to the type of project (VB Console, C# Web, etc) it is. You may have to poke around to find the right one for you.

Answer 2

In VS 2008, there is also a project file-level way to do this via the DependentUpon tag. You would edit your project file to look like this:

<Compile Include="SomeTableClass.cs" />
<Compile Include="SomeTableClass.Generated.cs">
    <DependentUpon>SomeTableClass.cs</DependentUpon>
</Compile>

Answer 3

In my Windows 7 x64 environment, the registry keys for Visual Studio 2008 Professional are located here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Projects\{E24C65DC-7377-472B-9ABA-BC803B73C61A}\RelatedFiles