Empty Visual Studio Project?

Question

Is there a way to have an empty Project in Visual Studio 2008 or 2010? I do not mean an empty solution, I mean an empty project in a solution. Basically I have a solution with multiple projects, and I want to add a project to track some static files that are part of the solution but not of any specific project. Adding them as solution files doesn't work because solution folders are not mapped to file system folders and I want to manage hierarchy from Visual Studio.

At the moment I create an empty Visual C# project which works, but I just wonder if there is a "more empty" project.

Answer 1

Sounds to me like you want a solution folder!

Answer 2

The Visual C++ project types has an "Empty Project" in the "General" category.

It comes up with several empty folders ("Header Files", "Resource Files", "Source Files") that are just 'filters' (they aren't on the file system). You can just remove them.

It also has all the properties of a C++ project available, so don't put C/C++ files in there unless you want them built (or you exclude them from the build).

Other than that, it's pretty empty.

Probably even closer to an "empty project" is a "Makefile Project" which is also located in the "General" category of the Visual C++ project templates. It also creates the 3 filter folders, along with a readme.txt file that you can delete. It has the advantage that unless you specifically give it commands to run during the build, it won't do a damn thing.