How to copy a disorganized Visual Studio solution?

Question

Hey. I've a very large C# solution, with many projects that are messy in many locations in my computer. I want to send the solution to a friend. Is there any tool to copy the solution to a new directory, with all the projects in it, cleaned and organized?

Thanks.

Wim · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-18T15:32:16.900

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Nope, not as far as I know.

I would suggest you copy and paste them manually in the structure you want and then simply open the solution file in any plain text editor and fix it so it references the appropriate subfolders with proj files in.

It's a very trivial task to do manually.

edited Dec 18 '09 at 15:32

answered Dec 18 '09 at 15:23

Wim

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I'm looking for an automatic solution. – Alon Gubkin Dec 18 '09 at 15:36
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And I said there isn't as far as I know. It's a 2 minute job, honestly. – Wim Dec 18 '09 at 15:38
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It's not a 2 minute job. There may be lots of references to fix. – reinierpost Jun 11 '10 at 14:02

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 18 '09 at 15:23

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How about cleaning it up in the first place?

Friends don't share messy solutions with friends

answered Dec 18 '09 at 15:23

Mark Seemann

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 18 '09 at 15:23

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No, unfortunately not ... you will have to copy each project into a folder, open the solution, and then reset every single project reference until it builds. Then you can zip up that one folder and send it

this is why one should always make their solutions so that each project is relative to the solution under the same folder :-)

answered Dec 18 '09 at 15:23

Joel Martinez

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This approach can be made easier if you open up the solution file in a text editor. First you will see the location of all project files and you can then update manually with the new location. – Dirk Vollmar Dec 18 '09 at 15:31

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 09 '11 at 22:04

Your question inspired me to add new functionality to my application VS Solution Dependency Visualizer: the latest version lists all directories used in a project and VS solution.

While this does not "copy the solution", as you requested, it gives you an overview of where your files are located.

How to copy a disorganized Visual Studio solution?

4 Answers4