Favorite projects in big solution in Visual Studio

Question

Except my apologies if this has been asked - I couldn't find the match. I have a solution with... 96 projects. I work with 3-4 at a time. Is there a way to filter out, mark as favorite, etc. projects that I am currently interested in? The problem is amplified by the fact that projects are sorted alphabetically and because one of my projects starts on B and another on T, I always had to scroll down and stress my brain while looking for needed thing. Somewhat disappointing. I don't think I used solution folders. Is that the way to go?

Answer 1

Although the original question was asked 2 years ago I would like to suggest a solution.

The free Visual Studio extension Funnel provides load filters for selective loading of project lists. After an initial compilation of all projects (which is required in order to fulfill all dependencies) only the projects which are really required for the current task can be loaded. Load filters can be defined for each aspect of the solution, combined with each other at load time and shared in teams.

Answer 2

I guess one thing that one may suggest is to switch to VS2010 that has more plugins and integral functionality to search and browse faster than in VS2008. Although it still lacks ability to create links to projects which can be placed into solution folders creating many to many relationship.

Answer 3

Would the "Solution Navigator" from the Productivity Power Tools plug-in help?

It allows you to...

• Search your solution, all the way down to class members
• Filter your solution or projects to see just opened files, unsaved files, and so on
• create multiple instances of the tool window. Each tool window can have a uniquely-scoped view. These views could be focused around a single project, class or file, or even based from search results.

Answer 4

My recommendation would be to create new solutions and just add those projects that you're working with. I'm guessing there will also be other projects they depend on, in which case you can either bring those into your solution as well, or update any references to point directly to the binaries of those other projects.

Answer 5

You can use solution folders for this.

Solution folders are nothing more than meta folders that just group projects together.