Why are there sln, suo and csproj files?

Question

I begin to use visual studio 10. After I'm done with C# program, I see that there are sln, and suo file in the project root directory, and csproj file in the subdirectory.

What are those files for?

I need to identify the files to put into git repository. Together with the source code/documents that I create, I guess those three files are the only one that I have to take care. Is that correct?

ADDED

How about the personal macro files? I have the emacs key swtich macro, does the sln file or csproj file have this macro?

Answer 1

You should commit the .sln and the .csproj, but not the .suo or the .user files.

You can add the following to .gitignore:

#ignore thumbnails created by windows
Thumbs.db
#Ignore files build by Visual Studio
*.obj
*.exe
*.pdb
*.user
*.aps
*.pch
*.vspscc
*_i.c
*_p.c
*.ncb
*.suo
*.tlb
*.tlh
*.bak
*.cache
*.ilk
*.log
[Bb]in
[Dd]ebug*/
*.lib
*.sbr
obj/
[Rr]elease*/
_ReSharper*/
[Tt]est[Rr]esult*

Answer 2

SLN (Solution) are the solution files. It stores info about the collection of projects that make up whatever you are developing. They contain projects, source control settings, or any other global level thing.

CSProj(Project file) are the actual code projects (C# Libraries, WCF Services, etc). It stores information at the project level. It wraps all relevant References, Classess, etc..

SUO (solution user options) are user settings files. Completely disposable, you can delete it and the most common thing you will lose are breakpoints.

---

Push everything except the SUO settings files.

Do not include any bin, debug, obj directory. The only DLLs (or compiled/generated object) you should include are those that are external to your application.

Answer 3

A solution is a structure for organizing projects in Visual Studio. It performs a function similar to Windows Program Group (.vbg) files in Visual Basic 6.0 and project workspace (.dsw) files in Visual C++ 6.0. The solution maintains the state information for projects in .sln (text-based, shared) and .suo (binary, user-specific solution options) files...

The solution user options (.suo) file is a structured storage, or compound, file stored in a binary format. You save user information into streams with the name of the stream being the key that will be used to identify the information in the .suo file.

You do not need to put .suo file in VCS. That is user-specific file.