Best type of Visual Studio project for a simple collection of files?

Question

I've got a collection of HTML documentation that I'd like to add to my solution in Visual Studio. It's just a collection of files -- there are no build steps.

What's the best way to add this to my solution? In the past I've used a C# class library project and disabled it in Build Configuration, but this felt wrong.

A "Makefile project" doesn't work, because it doesn't support nested folders.

I don't really want to use Solution Folders, because they're not real filesystem folders. This makes them harder to work with. Solution Folders are great when your solution has a large number of projects in it, but I don't think they're great for managing more than a couple of loose files.

How do others do this?

Answer 1

You can put them in solution folder

Right click on solution and select Add->Add existing item - it will create solution folder automatically. You can add solution folder manually via Add->New solution folder

Answer 2

I would recommend simply adding them directly under the solution (or rather under a Documentation folder under the solution). The context menu for the solution title in Solution Explorer gives options to create solution folders and add references to solution files.

Answer 3

Given that you don't want to use solution folders, I see absolutely no point of including them in your solution then. Any method you could use would be rather contrived. It is quite common simply to have a Documentation folder in the root directory of your solution that is not referenced in any way by the solution/project files. (If you like, you can then mirror the directory structure of Documentation using Solution Files.)

Answer 4

I always put a .Documentation folder in each project that I am making the documentation for. It's not as elegant as having a single location for the solution, but it also makes it so that as I use different projects in different solutions and have the documents follow their projects. At compile time I have the build system put all the documentation together in one folder.