Visual Studio add-in/extension for adding/removing/handling references easily - visual-studio

I'm looking for a way of handling references in an easier way in Visual Studio.
Is there an extension that provides one of those features:
Copy references from a project to another
Drag & Drop .dll files from Windows Explorer to the References folder in the Visual Studio solution?
Edit the Path of those dlls that aren't found in the Solution?
Any other interesting feature...
Edit:
It would be great to have all those features in a single place, but I'm just looking for an extension that provides any of the first 3.

To "Copy references from a project to another", you can use the Copy Reference and Paste Reference commands of Visual Studio Powertoys.
Visual Studio 2010's Productivity Power Tools offers a better, quicker Add Ref dialog.

Related

How to open a Visual Studio Code Folder (Project) in Visual Studio IDE

How do I open I a Visual Studio Code folder in Visual Studio 2015?
If I open it as a "Web Site", it tries to treat the node_modules directory as part of the project's normal JavaScript files and hits an error when the path exceed the maximum path length.
But I can't open it as any other project type unless I first create a project of that type and then move all the VS Code files into that folder.
Should I be trying to open it as a web site?
Or should I create a new project and then copy the files + folders into it?
Is there any advantage to having it as a project?
If I do create a project, it makes it difficult to work together with someone who is just using VS Code?
And if I use a project, which project type should I select?
Finally folder view has arrived in VS 2017 :)
You can find more details in here.
Currently there is no way to open a folder directly with Visual Studio.
Why? Because Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code only shared their name, not the idea behind it. To extend Jenny O'Reilly answer:
Visual Studio Code is a folder oriented editor
This means VSC has the same Point-of-View to your Project as the File Explorer.
Visual Studio (not Code) is a solution oriented integrated development environment (short IDE)
Instead every Project in Visual Studio needs a *.sln Solution-File as Root Component. From this point Visual Studio looks at your Project. An example would, if you copy File in your Project Folder, they wouldn't be recognized from Visual Studio. You have to add them first to your sln File, to see them. It also allows the developer to combine multiple projects (*.csproj,..) into one single Solution to build.
This means the idea behind these two editors is completely different.
Visual Studio (not code) Project-types for Web
There are Node.js Tools for Visual Studio
This will provide Node.js built-in project templates
Visual Studio 2015 comes with TypeScript templates
Workaround 1
A workaround would be a Blank Solution in which you set up your Visual Studio Code Project.
Workaround 2
Another trick would be the answer to this question. You can open your Project Folder as a Website Project.
File -> Open Website -> File System and choose the folder
Update
As you mentioned, there will be errors because Visual Studio tries to build the solutions. For the next few readers of this response, the work around for this (as John Pankowicz writes in the comment) is:
Right-click Web Site in Solution Explorer -> Property Pages -> Build -> Uncheck "Build Web Site as part of solution"
Update 2
(Thanks to JC1001 for this update)
The next version of Visual Studio (Visual Studio "15") will support opening a folder. This is mentioned in the Visual Studio Blog.
Also like in Visual Studio Code, there will be a prompt command for opening Folders. Right now you can use this in the preview version:
devenv /command “file.openfolder FOLDER_PATH”
In the future you will be able to use:
devenv FOLDER_PATH
Opinion
Personally I wouldn't recommend Visual Studio (not code) for HTML/Website projects without server-side-development, because I don't see any features. Even the intellisense suggests to me sometimes bad HTML Code (it's not the IDE's fault).
After all web projects are still text files. You can easily control group projects like this with Version Control. Visual Studio Code even provides an integrated Git support.
Visual Studio Code does not create "project files" that you can open in Visual Studio 2015. Basically, when you open up a Node website in Visual Studio, you need to re-create the folder structure in VS2015 and create a "project file".
I haven't seen any better ways of doing this, but will be happy when we can open a folder just as easilly as we can with VSCode
I'm sure it's not the best way but..
Open an existing .sln with notepad, change the names, save as [name of your project].sln.
Open with Visual Studio.

Solution-wide TODO list for C++ projects in Visual Studio

Is there any working add-in, fixing the broken (only showing entries for the current file) task window for Visual Studio C++ projects?
These could be one-trick solutions or functionality contained in some larger add-in. I wasn't able to find such a thing.
It appears that there is a working Visual Studio extension on visualstudiogallery that does that:
FeinTasks

Is it possible to create shortcut to several files in Microsoft Visual Studio solution

I'm wondering, is it possible to create something like shortcut, command, link etc to open several solution files at a time via solution explorer in Visual Studio 2013. The thing is I have several similar projects in one solution. Each of them has ProjectDatabaseInitializer class. I want to create shortcut which will open all of them at the same time. I have an idea to create bat file which will open this files via Visual Studio and add it to solution but I'm not sure which instance of Visual Studio will windows use to open those files (I'm often using more then one open Visual Studio instances at a time) and I'm wondering is there some native for Visual Studio way to accomplish this?
With the Favorite Documents extension you can get a menu item to open several files at once.

Visual studio 2010 solution explorer settings

I got a fairly large (C++) project in Visual studio 2010. Somehow I managed to click "Show all files" in the solution explorer and now a bug in visual studio 2010 is preventing me from uncheck the option.
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/614417/visual-studio-crashes-when-switching-solution-explorers-view
Do anyone here know where the this setting is stored? I've searched the solution file, project files, filter files without finding anything.
For C#, similar user-specific data is stored in SolutionName.suo (hidden) and ProjectName.csproj.user files. See if you have what might be the equivalent files for C++. You can freely delete these files to reset user-specific settings, which should restore solution explorer to its default view.
In addition to those programming in C++, for VS 2010 C++ these files are:
ProjectName.suo
ProjectName.vcxproj.user

Is there a free tool to integrate .NET Reflector with Visual Studio, besides TestDriven.NET?

I love the Go to Reflector menu option installed by TestDriven.NET. However, TestDriven.NET is not free for commercial use and so I do not have it at work.
Is there another tool out there that does just that - allows to jump to .NET Reflector from the source code in Visual Studio and which is totally free?
I know it is possible to develop a Visual Studio add-in that does it, but, alas, I have no time for it, so has one already been developed?
The latest version of Reflector have the Visual Studio add-in that you mention bundled with it for free.
My understanding from the author of TestDriven.NET is it is very difficult to intergrate .NET Reflector with Visual Studio. He use to provide a free .NET Reflector Add-in but (I don't remember his reason) decided to roll it up into newer versions of TestDriven.NET. I believe the source code (ReflectorVsAddin.zip) for the original add-in is still out there. (Found the old .NET 1.1 / Visual Studio 2003 source code, see the update below.) Someone probably has the original ZIP file.
To use with older versions of Visual Studio, I still have either all or some of the files included in ReflectorVsAddin.zip. I am sure some hardy soul could disassemble them and create an add-in based on the techniques. Yet, searching on "Reflector Hosting" resulted in numerous articles on how to integrate .NET Reflector with your own application. I believe it would be easier to start from scratch. I personally, find using .NET Reflector externally outside of Visual Studio easier to use.
Update
Building the Reflector Add-In
By Jamie Cansdale
Making Reflector into a Visual Studio.NET Add-In
Update
See How to: Load Assemblies into the Reflection-Only Context.
One parial solution might be for you to do the following:
Make sure you have Reflector registered so it shows on your context menu in windows explorer.
In visual studio, make sure the "Show all Files" button is clicked in your solution explorer
Go to the bin/Debug directory folder and right click on the directory
Choose "Open Folder in Windows Explorer"
Once windows explorer comes up, right click on your assembly and choose "Browse with Reflector"
This won't get you to the exact code you were looking at (like the TD.Net addin) but it will get you into reflector in a couple of clicks, just leaving you to use find to locate the code.

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