Why is “Set as Startup” option stored in the suo f

Question

It seems like this setting should be stored in the solution file so it's shared across all users and part of source code control. Since we don't check in the suo file, each user has to set this separately which seems strange.

Answer 1

I wrote a little command line utility for Windows called slnStartupProject to set the Startup Project automatically:

slnStartupProject slnFilename projectName

I personally use it to set the startup project after generating the solution with cmake that always sets a dummy ALL_BUILD project as the first project in the solution.

The source is on GitHub. Forks and feedback are welcome.

Answer 2

If you are using GIT, you can commit the default SUO file and then mark it as unchanged using

git update-index --assume-unchanged YourSolution.suo

It works also if you want to have more than one project in your default start group. The only disadvantage that I know about is that this command must be run by everyone who don't want to commit the SUO file.

Answer 3

Why should it be a non-user-specific preference?

If I've got a solution with 10 files in, and one developer is primarily testing/using one of those tools, why should that affect what I start up?

I think MS made the right choice on this one. The project I want to start is far from necessarily the project that other developers want to start.

Answer 4

In most cases, it does make sense to have a default on this.

It would be much better to accommodate a default startup project and store this in the .sln file, but which can be overridden by a developer in their .suo file. If the startup setting isn’t found in the .suo file, the default startup project in the .sln would be used.

Actually, this has been suggested on Visual Studio’s UserVoice.

Answer 5

It is absolutely necessary that everyone can define their StartUp Project themselves, as Jon has already said. But to have a dedicated default one would be great, and as I can tell, it is possible!

If you don’t have a .suo file in your solution directory, Visual Studio picks the first project in your .sln file as the default startup project.

1. Close your Visual Studio and open the .sln file in your favorite text editor. Starting in line 4, you see all your projects encapsulated in Project – EndProject lines.

2. Cut and paste the desired default startup project to the top position.

3. Delete your .suo file.

4. Open your solution in Visual Studio. Ta daa!

Is there a special award if you know something that Jon doesn't know? ;-)