Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 1, Master Projects and Solutions

#1 Manage Projects and Solutions

HACK

solution or project structure. In this hack, you will learn how to work with

and configure solutions and projects.

This hack applies to all versions of Visual Studio, but the dia-

logs and screens will vary slightly between versions. The

screenshots in this hack are all taken from Visual Studio .NET

2003 unless noted otherwise.

Solutions

Solutions are Visual Studio’s highest level of organization. They collect any

number of projects together under one manageable structure. Solutions

store information about the contained projects, including project dependen-

cies and build order, and can also contain miscellaneous solution items.

Solution files have a few limitations. Only a single solution can be opened in

an instance of Visual Studio at a time, and solution files cannot contain

other solution files. Projects, however, can be members of multiple solu-

tions. This allows you to create a number of solutions for different purposes

that make use of the same projects. (An example of this is business entities

or interfaces that you need to share across client and server solutions.)

Solutions are the best way to keep projects under source con-

trol. If you add the solution to source control, every devel-

oper on the project can use the same solution and is

guaranteed to use the same project and file structure.

Creating a solution. ...