"Add as Link" for folders in Visual Studio projects - visual-studio

Question

In Visual Studio, we can "Add as link" to add a link to a file in another project in the solution.
Is there any way to do this for entire folders, so that an entire folder in project A will be visible in project B, without the need to manually link to new items in that folder?

Answer 1

As this blogpost stated, it is possible.
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="any_abs_or_rel_path\**\*.*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
</Compile>
</ItemGroup>
But be aware, the files will not be copied.

Answer 2

In VS2012 and later, you can drag a folder to another project with alt key pressed. It's just the same as adding each file as link manually but faster.
upd:
Consider using Shared Projects if you are using VS2013 update 2 (with Shared Project Reference Manager) or VS2015.

Answer 3

One addition to the answer from mo. and the comment from Marcus, if you are linking content items you will need to include the file extension:
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="any_abs_or_rel_path\**\*.*">
<Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</Compile>
</ItemGroup>

Answer 4

Regarding the part of the original query to have a linked folder appear in the IDE, it is kind of possible to achieve this so there is a folder in the solution explorer with all linked files inside, instead of all the files appearing in the root of the solution. To achieve this, include the addition:
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="..\anypath\**\*.*">
<Link>MyData\A\%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
</Compile>
</ItemGroup>
This will include all files from the linked directory in a new folder in the solution explorer called MyData. The 'A' in the code above can be called anything but must be there in order for the folder to appear.

Answer 5

If you want to add a folder as a reference and you don't want to compile it, use:
<Content Include="any_path\**\*.*">
<Link>folder_in_B_project\%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
</Content>

Answer 6

Even when there are so many solutions it took me a while to understand it. Here I will try to explain it a little bit more.
I needed link to the whole folder so my final result is:
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="..\Gym.Management.Api\TestFolder\**\*.*">
<Link>TestFolder\%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
<CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
where:
..\Gym.Management.Api\TestFolder\ represents path to the other project containing the folder I want to link
TestFolder\ in <link> tag is the final(destination) folder in my current project where I want to link it
TIP:
When you are not sure how to get the proper Include path then in your current project right click on project->click Add->Existing item->navigate to one of those files from folder you want to link-> instead of Add, press the dropdown arrow next to it->click Add as link.
This link is inserted in your .csproj file and from there you can extract the Include path.

Answer 7

If what you are looking for is to add another folder to your current workspace for easy access & development experience.
you can do this by just clicking file -> Add Folder to Workspace option in vscode.

Answer 8

Bust out the shell and add a symbolic link.
runas Administrator then
mklink /d LinkToDirectory DirectoryThatIsLinkedTo
BAM symbolic link!
/d specifies directory link.
Works in Vista on up out of the box. Can be backported to XP.
Documentation here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194%28WS.10%29.aspx
For those not familiar with symbolic links, it's essentially a pointer to another file or directory. It's transparent to applications. One copy on disk, several ways to address it. You can also make a "hard link" which is not a pointer to another address, but an actual file ID entry in NTFS for the same file.
NOTE: as stated in the comments, this would only work on the computer where you created the symlink and wouldn't work in a Version Control System like git.