I have a solution with a decent number of projects (say, 30) and I want to find which of these projects reference a particular assembly.
Here's a concrete example: In the Object Browser I can see that two different versions of the same assembly are referenced throughout the solution. I want to see which project(s) use each of these references, so I can update them all to point to the same thing.
alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/bd7c85cb2e.png
Unfortunately, the .csproj files are scattered in different locations, so a simple grep is not all that simple.
Any suggestions?
I'm thinking of making a script that parses the .sln file and then parse each project file, but maybe there's a simpler solution.
PS. I'm using ReSharper, if that's any help.
In Resharper 5.0, you can click on a project and use "Find Code Dependent on Module". That should give you what you want.
Related
Is there anyway within Visual Studio / TFS to identify which project produces which dll?
I'm aware you can look under a particular project's properties and see what the name of the dll is, but in the circumstance where you have loads and loads of projects this doesn't seem very efficient.
I've got the situation where I've got a project that references a dll, which includes a method I want to examine, but I don't know what project produces this dll.
Unfortunately, no. The only way I know is that you may could use a decompile extension. (Strongly not recommend to use) Through the source code after decompile, you can view namespace and judge which project produces the dll. (Under normal circumstances)
And you may also have to face some problems such as:
Legal issues
Need to pay for the extension
Only work for C#/.Net
The source code may be confusion and not standard
This should be a one time activity, you can go ahead and take a look into the project file, in case of C# project the csproj file.
If you do not want to do it opening each file, then i would say write a small tool to read all the project files and look for the name.
BTW, this will be different for different projects, and you need to find out the proper location to look.
We have a big solution with a lot of projects in it. Some projects reference the same DLL's and I need to replace one DLL. Is there a way to see which references are in the entire solution so I don't have to go over each project one by one?
I want to see the solution-wide references, not per-project. Is it possible?
Just to expand a little further on Juozas answer, you can use most modern Text editors to find/replace. For example in Notepad++ use Find-in-Files (Ctrl-Shift-F)
Notice I left the end quote off the search as sometimes the Reference will include additional info, eg
Reference Include="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=
Leaving off the end double quote may then give you false positive (as in my example it includes refs to System.Data and System.Data.DataSetExtensions
You can try textual replace in .XXproj files to change the reference.
Visual Studio by itself doens´t provide any functionality to display or visualize project (assembly) references and dependencies.
For this i would recommened you to use NDepend. It provides a Trial mode and it can analyze your assemblies and display the assembly dependencies.
Being new to VS, how may I think of these two concepts, what is the difference?
I find some missing information in the other answers (at least for people who come from other IDEs like, say, Eclipse) . To say that a solution is a container for projects is only part of the thing. The conceptual feature of a VS project (what determines its 'granularity') is that one project produces one output: typically an executable or a library (dll). So, if you are going to code three executables that uses related code, you'll create one solution and at least three projects - probably more.
A solution is a container for projects, and tracks dependencies between projects.
Just to come up with a metaphor..
A solution is like a house, a project like a room. Each room provides a piece of functionality whereas the house, a container of rooms, provides the means to link the rooms together and organize them appropriately.
Kind of corny but I made it up on the fly, so bear with me :)
It doesn't help that Visual Studio seems to make things more confusing. "New Project" actually creates a new SOLUTION containing a project. "Open Project" actually opens a solution containing one (or many) project. (The file menu says "Open Project/Solution" but it really is opening solutions. There is no "Close Project" only "Close Solution" which is accurate.
So, in VS you are always working within a solution. Many solutions contain only one project and newer developers are likely to think of them as the same thing. However you can add other projects into a solution.
In case anyone decides to scroll down this far... I thought the MS docs did a pretty good job at describing the differences. I've copy pasted (and rephrased) the relevant bits here:
When you create an app, application, website, Web App, script, plug-in, etc in Visual Studio, you start with a project. In a logical sense, a project contains of all the source code files, icons, images, data files and anything else that will be compiled into an executable program or web site, or else is needed in order to perform the compilation. A project also contains all the compiler settings and other configuration files that might be needed by various services or components that your program will communicate with.
You don't have to use solutions or projects if you don't want to. You can simply open the files in Visual Studio and start editing your code.
In a literal sense, a project is an XML file (.vbproj, .csproj, .vcxproj) that defines a virtual folder hierarchy along with paths to all the items it "contains" and all the build settings.
In Visual Studio, the project file is used by Solution Explorer to display the project contents and settings. When you compile your project, the MSBuild engine consumes the project file to create the executable. You can also customize projects to product other kinds of output.
A project is contained, in a logical sense and in the file system, within a solution, which may contain one or more projects, along with build information, Visual Studio window settings, and any miscellaneous files that aren't associated with any project. In a literal sense, the solution is a text file with its own unique format; it is generally not intended to be edited by hand.
A solution has an associated .suo file that stores settings, preferences and configuration information for each user that has worked on the project.
A Solution can have many Projects.
The Solution can also handle managing the dependencies between its different Projects...making sure that each Project gets Built in the appropriate order for the final Solution to work.
A project contains executable and library files that make up an application or component of an application.
A solution is a placeholder for logically related projects that make up an application. For example, you could have separate projects for your application's GUI, database access layer, and so on. The projects would be specific divisions for your program's functionality, and the solution would be the umbrella unifying all of them under one application.
A solution is a readable text file whose extension is .sln and having a structured content that describes the projects that it contains. A project is a readable XML formatted text file whose extension is .vcxproj and having a structured content according to its XML schema, and whose primary purpose is to contain the listing of source codes filenames and their dependencies or references to other project's source codes as well.
Solutions are containers for projects - you can also use them to organize items that are used across different related project (shared dll's and such).
Solutions are containers used by Visual Studio to organize one or more related projects. When you open a solution in Visual Studio, it will automatically load all the projects it contains.
When you create a new project in Visual Studio, it automatically creates a solution to house the project if there's not a solution already open.
You can set dependencies of projects on other projects in the solution. The dependent project is build after the project it is depending on is built.
For more details refer - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/quickstart-projects-solutions
If you are from an Eclipse background you would probably go to build path of a project and add a dependency on other project or add an external jar. In VS you can do that in a single container called solution where all related projects are grouped together.
Eg. Let's say you are build and android and iOS app in xamrin, there would be some common code and resources that could go in a separate project and then your android and iOS projects can depend on this common code project. Also you could have projects to test these projects etc.
I have two Visual Studio 2005 solutions, one of which builds a binary and all of its dependencies, and one of which builds a web app and some utilities and an installer for them. Up until now, we've had the aforementioned binary just included in the installer as a static file; I want to take all of the projects from that binary's solution and have them be part of the installer solution, for a single once-through build of everything.
As far as I can tell, I can't add the existing projects from the binary's solution without losing the dependency information. This will work, but since there are 20 some projects involved, I want to preserve dependency information when moving the projects in. It's looking like I may just have to do this in a text editor with the solution XML... is there a better way?
Note that this is NOT the same as the related questions about merging two versions of the same solution file.
There's a way to do this built in to Visual Studio. Right click the solution, and select Add -> Existing Project. Select the other solution from there.
If you want to automate the process you can try playing around with this tool
http://code.google.com/p/merge-solutions/
You might want to consider using references instead of the dependencies. Those are stored in project's file and consequently are preserved across solutions. There might be something which can be done with Dependencies and not with References, however I am not aware of any such situation and for simple uses references are more than enough.
Try selecting all of the project nodes in the tree then drag & drop them into the other solution.
Is there a way to use add-as-link when dragging and dropping source files or entire source trees into a C# project?
Currently, dragging a tree of source files onto a C# project will cause Visual Studio to copy all files to mirror tree below my solution file.
This can be avoided with the the add-as-link option as depicted in the picture below. However, it gets tedious for large trees or when some files in a directory are already part of the project.
Screenshot of the add-as-link functionality in Visual Studio http://jaapsuter.com/images/add_cs_file.jpg
I've looked in Tools->Options, searched the web, and held various magic key combinations when dragging and dropping, to no avail.
I'm tempted to write a script that just globs my .cs files and runs a regular expression over my .csproj file. I'm aware of NAnt, Premake, and other solutions - but I'd like something lightweight.
Although this question has been answered, I thought I'd provide another way, because I found this question while figuring out if it was possible to add linked files in Visual Studio using drag-drop, rather than the cumbersome Add Items dialog box. And while the answer here wasn't what I was looking for, I found out myself:
Holding down CTRL+SHIFT down while drag-dropping, will create linked files. Additionally holding down only CTRL will create copies, but not remove the source file.
What you can also do if you don't find a solution is bind a directory to your project by hand once and let the project find all .cs files in that directory automatically when it loads.
This is easily done by changing your MSBuild file in the following way:
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="SomeDirectory\**\*.cs"/>
</ItemGroup>
This will take all .cs files in SomeDirectory and include them to the project. This is very useful if there are often a lot of files added to the project. However, it may break on some machine adding useless files. That's why I would only recommend that on an external project that's not editable in your current workspace.
Probably not what you're asking for, but once I had two .NET applications which I wanted to share a lot of source files and so I placed both Visual Studio solutions in the same directory! It actually works, although I guess that a lot can be said about this approach...
Otherwise the most beautiful way to share code is by placing the shared code in a separate assembly, although this requires quite a bit of extra work if it is not written like that in the first place.