Folders or Projects in a Visual Studio Solution?
When spliting a solution in to logical layers, when is it best to use a separate project over just grouping by a folder?...
projects-and-solutions
ASP.NET Web Site or Web Project
When creating a new ASP.NET project in Visual Studio should I chose create: website or project? I understand that web application project was the way to do it back in the day with VS 2003 but is it still applicable today? What are some of the caveats using one over the other? ...
Visual Studio open files question
Is it possible to open a project in Visual Studio 2008 without opening all the files that were previously opened last time I had the project open. I have a habit of keeping many files open as I am working on them, so next time I open the project, it (very slowly) loads up a bunch of files into the editor that I may not even need open. I...
What is the biggest VS "solution" you've ever seen?
I once worked for a bank, and the solution contained 40 projects. It was .NET 1.1 and took forever to compile. ...
How to open VS 2008 solution in VS 2005?
I have seen Solutions created in Visual Studio 2008 cannot be opened in Visual Studio 2005 and tried workaround 1. Yet to try the workaround 2. But as that link was bit old and out of desperation asking here: Is there any convertor available? ...
Display solution/file path in Visual Studio IDE
I frequently work with multiple instances of Visual Studio, often working on different branches of the same solution. VC6 used to display the full path of the current source file in its title bar, but Visual Studio 2005 doesn't appear to do this. This makes it slightly more awkward than it should be to work out which branch of the solut...
Common Files in Visual Studio Solution
Many times I have seen Visual Studio solutions which have multiple projects that share source files. These common source files are usually out in a common directory and in the solution explorer their icon shows up with a link arrow in the bottom left. However, any time I try to add a source file to the project that is outside of that p...
Tips and tricks for working with Microsoft Visual Studio solutions and project
After answering on this question I thought it would be nice to collect some tips & tricks for working with MSVS solutions and projects. Here is my list: How to avoid saving new projects automatically to reduce garbage in file system. Uncheck Tools->Options->Projects and Solutions->Save new projects when created How to add common ...
Centralizing/controlling arbitrary builds of .NET projects and solutions.
Over the years I have created and tweaked a set of NAnt scripts to perform complete project builds. The main script takes a single application end point (a web application project for example) and does a complete, from source control, build of it. The scripts are preconfigured with the necessary information regarding build output locat...
Tool to view the contents of the Solution User Options file (.suo)
Are there any free tools available to view the contents of the solution user options file (the .suo file that accompanies solution files)? I know it's basically formatted as a file system within the file, but I'd like to be able to view the contents so that I can figure out which aspects of my solution and customizations are causing it ...
What's the best way of parsing strings?
We've got a scenario that requires us to parse lots of e-mail (plain text), each e-mail 'type' is the result of a script being run against various platforms. Some are tab delimited, some are space delimited, some we simply don't know yet. We'll need to support more 'formats' in the future too. Do we go for a solution using: Regex Sim...
VS2008 Setup Project: Shared (By All Users) Application Data Files?
Hello, fellow anthropoids and lily pads and paddlewheels! I'm developing a Windows desktop app in C#/.NET/WPF, using VS 2008. The app is required to install and run on Vista and XP machines. I'm working on a Setup/Windows Installer Project to install the app. My app requires read/modify/write access to a SQLCE database file (.sdf) and ...
Visual Studio Solutions / Multiple project : How to effectively propagate project properties amongst several projects
I am working with a Visual Studio 2005 C++ solution that includes multiple projects (about 30). Based upon my experience, it often becomes annoying to maintain all the properties of the projects (i.e include path, lib path, linked libs, code generation options, ...), as you often have to click each and every project in order to modify ...
Weird MSC 8.0 error: "The value of ESP was not properly saved across a function call..."
We recently attempted to break apart some of our Visual Studio projects into libraries, and everything seemed to compile and build fine in a test project with one of the library projects as a dependency. However, attempting to run the application gave us the following nasty run-time error message: Run-Time Check Failure #0 - The valu...
What are the various "Build action" settings in VS.NET project properties and what do they do?
For the most part you just take whatever Visual Studio sets it for you as a default.. I'm referring to the BuildAction Property for each file selected in your solution explorer. There are a number of options and its difficult to know what each one of them will do. ...
Structuring projects & dependencies of large winforms applications in C#
UPDATE: This is one of my most-visited questions, and yet I still haven't really found a satisfactory solution for my project. One idea I read in an answer to another question is to create a tool which can build solutions 'on the fly' for projects that you pick from a list. I have yet to try that though. How do you structure a very la...
New open source project ideas?
I am thinking of either joining in an open source project or come up with a own open source project. Currently i did some brainstorming on my own. And i thinking of doing some projects like Online recruitment website similar to jorbb.com An offline mode discussion forum akin like the golden days of the ‘IRC’ era, which builds upon the ...
Project dependencies across multiple Visual Studio versions
I have 3 .net projects. Project1.dll is generated by a VS2008 project. Project2.dll is generated by a VS2005 project that references Project1.dll. Project3.dll is generated by a VS2008 project that references both Project1.dll and Project2.dll. Right now, I build Project1.dll, and manually copy it to the place where Project 2 can...
What is the best way to build a common utilities library?
I am wondering what is the best way to construct a common utilities library that can be used in different projects. I am using .Net and C#. Should I create a separate project for each utility such as Logging, Authentication, Excel etc. and release them separately along with dependencies or should i include all utilities in one common ut...
What do you do about references when unloading a project in Visual Studio?
When you unload a project in Visual Studio, any referencing projects get warning triangles on their reference to the unloaded project. I've written myself a macro to do clever stuff (detect add/remove of project and transform any references from-to file/project dependency), but I can't believe that I'm not missing something much simpler....