How to open two Solution in one Visual Studio IDE? - visual-studio

I am working on two different solutions, say, Solution1 and Solution2. As these two solutions are dependent upon each other, I have to open two separate Visual Studio while developing.
It is really difficult to switch between these Visual Studio. I can't merge these two solutions into one as Solution1 is being used by other projects and all are part of Source Control.
Just wondering, can I open both solutions in the same Visual Studio IDE? I searched a lot but no luck. Any suggestions on existing VS AddIn or how to develop it would also be helpful.
Visual Studio version - 2012 Ultimate
Source Control - TFS

Create a third Solution C than includes project from both A and B: you can keep C as a local file i.e. you don't check it in version control if this can disturb the team.
Else you can open two instances of Visual Studio and switch at need: VS is smart enough to sense file system changes, but you have to be careful in saving before switching.

Does it have to be within the same IDE instance?
You could right click the VS icon in the task bar, select "Visual Studio 20__", and you will have two seperate instances of VS. You can then open separate solutions in both, without merging the two under one solution.
This will eat up far more resources, however. The previous responses are preferable.

What you are asking is impossible and extremely dysfunctional.
The supported solution would be to add all of the projects from Solution B to Solution A. Then you can open a single solution with all of your work. If you want compartmentalisation within your solution you can use solution folders.
If you can you should have a separate solution for the core components and package them as a nuget package. Both of your other solutions can then take a dependency on that single shared package.

open the solution 1 and right click and add the second solution. When you close the VS next time it will told you once to save the sln file. Do it for saving the settings in sln file.
Now everytime you will open sln1 will show you both project. It will not affect if you only move first project to pen drive or move to another computer. In case of 2nd project missing it will told you that 2nd project not found no more worries.
In case of Source Control - TFS I can't confirm how it work but their is some sollution for github (Which maybe hint anything for TFS).
The same trick can be applied but you don't need to push modified sln so this will not break anyone else's settings. If TFS store the files and code on the file system that you currently working then you can applied same trick to do applied this trick to that TFS project which is stored in your file system.

1.open solution1 in visual studio 2012 .
2.Right click on solution1 ,add existing project option.
3.select the solution2 .
4.Now solution1 and solution2 file are same project.

Related

Organizing project files in Visual Studio for better explorer view

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.

Dll dependencies on a Visual Studio 2010 solution and TFS

How can I make a solution in visual studio so that the .dll dependencies that reside in some other directory totally different from where the solution itself is affected by "get latest".
What I've tried is creating a Dependencies solution folder within the solution itself and added the dlls to it, that way they belong to the solution even though they don't belong to the directory structure of the solution.
So for example the .sln file is in:
D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA\solution.sln
and the dlls are in:
d:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionX\Dependencies\Binaries
What I really want to achieve is to have a foolproof way to build the solution, including the following scenario:
1- Have a brand new installation of windows, visual studio, etc.
2- open visual studio
3- find solution.sln on TFS, double click on it so that visual studio gets every project and files in the solution, and opens the solution
4- successfully build
What happens when I try the Dependencies solution folder approach and repeat the scenario above, it will get all the projects within the solution, opens it, but the dependencies solution contents won't be pulled from TFS (although Visual Studio shows them on Solution explorer), which I think is flawed.
Some suggestions that don't involve creating pre/post build scripts are appreciated.
When you attempt to open a solution for the first time using the TFS Source Control Explorer, you may find that not all of your dependencies will be retrieved - the squiggly line may be highlighting some of your missing References.
One work around is to...
SOLUTION SETUP
Checkout all of your source code from TFS (i.e. Main and all of the sub-directories)
Open your solution in Visual Studio (i.e. MyApplication.sln)
In the solution explorer, create a New Solution Folder called ThirdPartyDll, and then add the appropriate assembly references (i.e. Assembly1.dll, Assembly2.dll,...)
Check-in your solution to TFS
SAMPLE FILE STRUCTURE
Main
MyApplication.sln
Source
MyProjectA
MyProjectA.csproj
MyProjectB
MyProjectB.csproj
Dependencies
Assembly1.dll
Assembly2.dll
You've run into a limitation of the "Open from Source Control" functionality. If you added the solution to source control from Visual Studio you should have seen the following message:
"The project that you are attempting to add to source control may cause other source control users to have difficulty opening this solution or getting newer versions of it. To avoid this problem, add the project from a location below the binding root of the other source controlled projects in the solution."
Open from Source Control will create a workspace mapping for the solutions root directory (D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA) but not a separate one for the SolutionX folder which is a peer to SolutionA. On the "new" machine you will need to manually create a workspace mapping to d:\tfs\repository\main in order to get both the SolutionA and SolutionX folder.
Create a solution folder and add the dependencies to it, that way when VS gets latest for the solution it will download these files. A bit brittle as people will need to maintain that folder but it works.
Alternatively create a nuget package and use restore packages on build. It will require a couple of extra steps when you create a new developer box (your nuget package repo will need to be added) but it will work for all projects going forward and is less brittle than the solution folder method.

Create a physical copy of a source file in Visual Studio

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.

Solution file vs. Project file in Visual Studio

Can someone briefly explain to me the difference between Visual Studio's solution file (.sln) and project file (.vcproj).
It seems to me opening either one open the correct solution/project in Visual Studio. Is one the super-set of the other?
Note: I am currently using Visual Studio 2008 working on a project that was brought forward from Visual Studio 2005 (I believe).
A solution is a set of projects. If you need more than one project in your software, then go with solutions. I.E.: A Class Library Project + A Web Application Project.
A project file typically corresponds to a single module: EXE or DLL or LIB. A solution manages a collection of project files.
A solution is a collection of projects. Visual Studio is made so that it cannot function without a solution, so if you open a bare project, it will generate the solution automatically (or try to find one).
One solution can contain zero or more projects. Everything is in projects, so a solution with zero projects doesn't contain anything at all besides the solution properties.
Visual studio keeps track of where the projects are used, so if you open a project file, it will open (IIRC) the last solution where it was used.
When you create a project from scratch, a solution is also created, but it's not shown until you add another project to it. It looks like you have only the project open, but it's actually a solution containing the project that is open.
Specifically project files are intended to contain the data required to build the files in the project into an exe or dll. This file is utilized by the local compilers or with systems such as Team Foundation system and server side build agents.
Solutions are a client (IDE) construct designed to manage collections of projects, which in effect is a collection of different build definitions and associated files.
Solution files are typically made up of multiple project files.

Integrate Visual Source Safe with Visual Studio without using source control binding

Is there a way to integrate Visual Studio with VSS without doing source control binding?
The problem I have is that my team is opposing to add source control binding to the solution and project files, since they claim it adds more problems (restrictions) for them.
On the other hand, I really like to perform most of the source control operations from Visual Studio.
Is there any way to have the solution file and all the project files the way they are (without added binding to VSS) and still have VSS and VS integration without forcing other team members to use that integration.
I don't see a way to do it per project.
You can however you do it for IDE (all projects loaded).
It is under Tools\Options\Source Control
and then set Binding to None.
I see it in VS 2005 and 2008. I gave it a try in a project I wanted to convert from VS2005 to 2008 and appeared to work (I did not want to check in/out files for conversion).
The answer to your question is "no." Bindings and VS integration are one & the same with SourceSafe. I'm not even sure what it would mean for a solution to be integrated but not bound, or vice versa. What exactly are your teammates looking for?
You can adjust bindings per-project in the File -> Source Control -> Change Source Control dialog. You can also adjust them per-user (effectively; not a supported configuration) by excluding the *scc files from source control. However, you are likely to encounter problems down the road if you try to manage these files yourself instead of using the Add Solution To SCC wizard. More info:
http://alinconstantin.dtdns.net/WebDocs/Scc/_Bindings.htm
http://alinconstantin.dtdns.net/WebDocs/Scc/_WebEnlist.htm
The binding is stored in the .vssscc, .vspscc and MSSCCPRJ.SCC files.
If you don't add these files to Visual Source Safe every developer can configure his bindings like he wants.
Since we use Perforce, I'm not 100% sure if this works with VSS.

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