Visual Studio Hacks

20

|

Chapter 1, Master Projects and Solutions

#4 Hack the Project and Solution Files

HACK

By using Enterprise Templates, you can also take advantage of some prefab-

ricated projects called building blocks that are located under the Enterprise

Template Project folder in the New Project dialog. An architect could create

a number of Enterprise Templates to dictate how solutions should be built

and organized inside his organization. Instead of starting from scratch,

developers would use the template to dictate their general architecture.

HACK

#4

Hack the Project and Solution Files Hack #4

Discover the format of these two Visual Studio files and learn about a tool to

convert these files between versions of Visual Studio.

Solution and project files are an essential part of working with Visual Stu-

dio. You will almost always work with the solution and project files through

the IDE, whether adding projects to your solution or configuring your

project. The purpose of this hack is to describe the format of these files for

two reasons. If your project or solution files become corrupted, knowing the

structure of these files might help you fix the file without having to re-create

the entire project or solution. Also, knowing the structure of these files will

help you if you want to convert these files or write a tool that works directly

with these files.

You must edit these files with extreme care. The format of ...