I am using Visual Studio 2010 and somehow the people who created this project have a folder which contains files for multiple projects in a single solution.
Is there a way to find in which project in the solution explorer a file is included ?
Outside of Solution Explorer, you can use a utility like WinGrep to search all .csproj files (or if not using c#, whatever extension for your project files).
I do that type of thing all the time. A project file is really just a text file that can be searched like any other text file.
Since then I found that Microsoft Productivity Power Tools does this. When installing it you get a 'Solution Navigator' in the 'Solution Explorer' tab which allows you to search files and it will display to which project it belongs.
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I have a project in visual studio where there are several files arranged in folders (filters). Inside the project, everything is well organized, but as soon as I go to the explorer, I see that all the project files are in the same folder. How can I properly organize my project so that the repository doesn't look like a bunch of files in one folder?
I use Visual Studio 2022
I tried to manually decompose the files into folders, but when I did this, visual studio began to swear that it could not find the files
Can you share a screenshot of what you have and what you want?
I ask because there are two aspects to this.
The arrangement of projects within Solution Explorer
The arrangement of files within projects within Solution Explorer
The first can be controlled by adding solution folders. The structure is stored within the .sln file.
The second is generally a representation of the file system, depending upon your project type.
Also, make sure you're using the Solution Explorer view. Does this button appear clicked for you?
If so, you should unclick it. Solution Explorer can show you either the solution view (default, and what I refer to above) or the file system view.
I was writing this program all in Vim and now I'm thinking of moving to Visual Studio, but since I didn't start in Visual Studio in the first place, there is no .sln file to open from. How should I open such a project in Visual Studio?
If you have a web project (without a .sln), you must do:
Menu File → Open → Web Site...
And choose the folder where the project is.
If a *.csproj file exists, you can build a new solution by Visual Studio at first. Next, you can open this *.csproj file in Visual Studio.
An even simpler way in Visual Studio is to follow this:
Menu File → New → Project from existing code
Choose the source file location and a .csproj and .sln file is created.
The simplest way to do this (assuming this is not a web project, as indicated in another answer) would most likely be to:
Create a new project (of the desired type), which should also create the solution for it to live within.
In the solution explorer, right click and select "Add > Existing item..."
Insert all individual files that belong in this new project.
It's probably also worth noting that it's a good idea to double check the project setting, namespaces, etc. before you get too far with building up your project to avoid potential issues later.
I checked the solution file and the project file, and can not find anything related to this setting. When people get latest version from TFS source control, they always see the 'loaded' status, which is not really what I want.
This information is stored in the solution user options file (.suo) which you can find in the same directory as the solution file. As the name implies this is user specific information which means sharing this across the team will be difficult because then everyone will need to live with the same options and store files in the exact location because the .suo file contains full paths.
For anyone else coming here with Visual Studio 2019, the unloading of projects is no longer saved in the SUO (at least in my experience). To save your unloaded project settings, you want to create a solution filter file (.slnf) which is the same as your solution file (.sln) except that it stores which projects you want loaded or not when opening the solution. Once created, you will double-click the .snlf file instead of the .sln file in order to load your filtered projects.
To create the solution filter file you can follow the instructions at this link or follow the summary below:
Open your solution (.sln)
Unload the projects that you want filtered out
Right-click on the solution from within the Solution Explorer
Choose Save As Solution Filter
Choose a location to save the file (I saved it right next my .sln file)
This will add the .slnf to your recently opened solutions list so you can either open from there going forward or navigate to the .slnf file and double-click it.
If you still want to see your unloaded projects after opening the .slnf, highlight the solution from within the Solution Explorer and click the Show All Files icon.
Base on this if you want to share your load/unload setting via source control you can use solution filter file which is .slnf extension.
So when you open the .slnf file instead of .sln file you will see the filtered project are loaded.
On MacOS with Visual Studio 2022 for Mac (i.e. v17.0 Preview, "Visual Studio Community 2022 for Mac Preview") I do not see either .sln nor .slnf files.
I observe that unloaded projects are saved in folder /.vs/[SolutionName]/xs/UserPrefs.xml. And when I close Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, I see that UserPrefs.xml is saved.
UserPrefs.xml Snippet:
<DisabledProjects>
<String>...</String>
</DisabledProjects>
In Visual Studio, if I try to copy a file from one project to another (by using Copy and Paste or by dragging the file to the new project while holding the Ctrl key) it creates a reference to the source file in the original location. Is there a way to create a physical copy of the source file and place that in the target project source direction without having to resort to using Windows Explorer to copy the file manually?
It's not pretty, but when I want to do what you're suggesting, I double-click on the file in Visual Studio, which opens it. Then I do a File->Save As, choose the right directory and save it. All from within Visual Studio. This is usually followed by adding the new file to the other project.
Was just doing this and realized I should mention a side-effect. Depending on your source control (in my case, TFS 2010), doing this from within Visual Studio may modify the location of the file in the project. For me, this means making sure that neither the file nor its project have any pending changes, doing the save as, then doing an undo of the change this causes in TFS 2010 (project change, file add and delete).
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0fb6xxhb.aspx:
If you are working with solution items, Visual C++ projects, or other similar projects, you are always working with links in Solution Explorer. If you are working with Visual Basic projects, Visual C# projects, and other projects, you might be working with links or files.
Essentially, the answer to my question is 'No'. In most cases, I must use Windows Explorer.
I'm trying to view history in Visual Studio 2010 for all files included in a given Solution file via the Solution Explorer View. I use TFS 2010 for source control, and I'm aware that I can get history for a folder recursively in Source Control Explorer. My issue is that we have multiple projects in a root directory, all of which are included in a variety of solution files in that same directory (each solution file represents a deploy-able component, including some "shared code" between them). I just want to view history on all of the files included in a given solution file, and not everything in this root directory. When I right click on a solution or project in Solution Explorer and "View History", I just get history for that solution file or project file, nothing more.
Alas, this cannot be done with TFS as it is.
TFS Source control does not know if a file is a solution file or a text document. It just stores it for you. There is no parsing at all. I can (and do) store Delphi project files in TFS. There is no way for TFS to be able to understand and be smart about every file type that exists.
It would be nice if Solution explorer did this for you (as it is specific to your project). But it does not.
You could create a custom plugin to TFS and Visual Studio to do what you are asking, but it would probably take longer than just manually checking the history of all the files in your solution.
This might help, it's an add-in extension
VS 2010 and VS 2012