Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 1, Master Projects and Solutions

#4 Hack the Project and Solution Files

HACK

Visual Studio 2005 includes an additional section that is not present in any

of the older versions of Visual Studio; it’s shown here:

GlobalSection(SolutionProperties) = preSolution

HideSolutionNode = FALSE

EndGlobalSection

If the FALSE is switched to TRUE, then the solution node is hidden in the

IDE.

Project Files

Each project creates a number of files to store information about itself. This

includes a project file and a user settings file. The extension for the project

file is based on the language type; for example, a C# Project is saved with

the extension .csproj and a VB.NET Project is stored with the extension .

vbproj. Thankfully, the internal formats of these various files are based on

the same XML schema. The beginning of each project file includes some

basic information about the project, including the version of Visual Studio

that it was created for as well as the GUID for this project. Here is an exam-

ple of this section:

<VisualStudioProject>

<CSHARP

ProjectType = "Local"

ProductVersion = "7.10.3077"

SchemaVersion = "2.0"

ProjectGuid = "{89EE0E8E-C5C6-4772-A5EE-D347E40FB0E4}"

>

This is from a Visual Studio .NET 2003 project file, which is why the

ProductVersion is set to 7.1 and the SchemaVersion is set to 2.0. In Visual Stu-

dio .NET 2002, the

ProductVersion would be 7.0 and the SchemaVersion

would be 1.0. These settings are no longer relevant in Visual Studio 2005 as

project files are now MSBuild files.

Notice that the version number used for Visual Studio .NET

2003 is 7.1 in the project file and 8.0 in the Solution file.

The next section of the project file is the Build section, which includes build

settings and configuration settings as well as references information. Here is

the

Build settings section:

<Build>

<Settings

ApplicationIcon = ""

AssemblyKeyContainerName = ""

Hack the Project and Solution Files #4

Chapter 1, Master Projects and Solutions

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HACK

AssemblyName = "HacksLib"

AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile = ""

DefaultClientScript = "JScript"

DefaultHTMLPageLayout = "Grid"

DefaultTargetSchema = "IE50"

DelaySign = "false"

OutputType = "Library"

PreBuildEvent = ""

PostBuildEvent = ""

RootNamespace = "HacksLib"

RunPostBuildEvent = "OnBuildSuccess"

StartupObject = "">

As you can see, this section includes information like the AssemblyName and

OutputType of the project. The next part of the Build section is for the vari-

ous build configurations:

<Config

Name = "Debug"

AllowUnsafeBlocks = "false"

BaseAddress = "285212672"

CheckForOverflowUnderflow = "false"

ConfigurationOverrideFile = ""

DefineConstants = "DEBUG;TRACE"

DocumentationFile = ""

DebugSymbols = "true"

FileAlignment = "4096"

IncrementalBuild = "false"

NoStdLib = "false"

NoWarn = ""

Optimize = "false"

OutputPath = "bin\Debug\"

RegisterForComInterop = "false"

RemoveIntegerChecks = "false"

TreatWarningsAsErrors = "false"

WarningLevel = "4"/>

This section includes configuration-specific build settings. The project file

will usually contain at least a

Debug and Release section. The next part of the

Build section contains all of the references for this project. Here is an abbre-

viated example of this section:

<References>

<Reference

Name = "System"

AssemblyName = "System"

HintPath = "..\..\..\..\..\..\..\..\..\..\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\

Framework\v1.1.4322\System.dll"

</References></Build>

The References section contains a reference tag for each assembly refer-

enced by the project. Starting with Visual Studio 2005, you can create a ref-

erence to either an assembly or an executable, which comes in very handy