PowerShell Script to delete a folder in a Visual Studio Project with EnvDTE

Question

Using PowerShell I am trying to remove a specific sub-folder from my project using EnvDTE.

The folder I want to remove is:

MyWebProject\Assets\FolderToDelete

And the script I have started with is:

$DTE.Solution.Projects|Where-Object{$_.Name -eq 'MyWebProject'}|Select-Object -Expand ProjectItems

Using a loop, I then traverse ProjectItems to find "FolderToDelete" (of type ProjectItem). I then call ProjectItem.Remove as well as delete it from disk:

$folderToDelete.Remove()
$folderToDeletePath = $folderToDelete.Remove.Properties.Item("FullPath").Value
Remove-Item -path $folderToDeletePath -recurse
$project.Save()

In the Visual Studio solution explorer, I have "Show All Files" turned on and I can see that "FolderToDelete" is removed from the project, but the solution explorer still shows it as being it on disk, but it has actually been deleted (it goes away if I click "refresh" in the solution explorer").

This causes some issues for me as Visual Studio still seems to think it is on disk.

Using EnvDTE, how can I get Visual Studio to refresh and acknowledge this deletion?

Answer 1

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You don't traverse the file system the way you are trying to with what you have posted.

Normal file system traversal is via...

# List the full path of the current directory and all child folders 
(Get-ChildItem -Path 'D:\MyProject' -Directory -Recurse).FullName

# Only get a specific folder
(Get-ChildItem -Path 'D:\MyProject' -Directory -Recurse -Filter 'Assets').FullName

... then using the Remove-Item cmdlet or by directly navigating the via the full UNC and using the Remove-Item cmdlet.

# Get parameters, example, full and Online help for a cmdlet or function

(Get-Command -Name Remove-Item).Parameters
Get-help -Name Remove-Item -Examples
Get-help -Name Remove-Item -Full
Get-help -Name Remove-Item -Online

I get that you are using Visual Studio, but even, As per MS Docs, ProjectItem.Remove Method.. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/envdte.projectitem.remove?view=visualstudiosdk-2017

And the docs, specifically state what and how it is used.

For the ProjectItem object, removes a project item from the project. If ProjectItem.ProjectItems is not null — that is, if there's a subdirectory — then Remove removes all of the project items in that directory and its subdirectories.

There is no recurse method/option on this one, so you have to do this manually.

This is even covered here:

Cleaning up Visual Studio project folders using PowerShell

Over the years I have created a lot of code samples and demo projects using Visual Studios. I keep many of these in a single folder which contains a several subfolders for organizing the code based on the technology being used. As you open, build and close Visual Studio projects a lot of additional files and folders get created.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rbrundritt/2014/09/18/cleaning-up-visual-studio-project-folders-using-powershell

If you are going the pure Visual Studio way, here is a post that talks to folder enumeration using DTE, then you can take whatever action on it as needed.

How to get folders under projects?

I am trying to get a list of projects and folders under it. I am able to get the projects and project-items using:

How to get folders under projects?