Project-Depender

Suppose that you have many projects, but not all in the same solution. You have defined references between the projects as references to the dll's, not as project references.

You build solutions on an ad-hoc basis, depending on which projects you are working on. Different team members might group the projects into different solutions.

When you build a solution, you might find that Visual Studio builds the projects in the wrong order. This is because the references between the projects are not automatically handled as build-dependencies.

This Visual Solution extension adds a command to the tools menu
"Generate Build-Dependencies from references"

Starting with version 1.1, the extension shows a list of relationships, indicating which ones are build-dependencies and which are references.

You have the option to

• add build-dependencies corresponding to the references or to
• clear all existing build-dependencies and regenerate them from the references

The following screen shot illustrates the results in Visual Studio:

The project depender recognizes that the references (on the left) refer to projects in the same solution, and generates the project dependencies (on the right).

As a result, Visual Studio should build the projects in the correct order.

You can view the project dependencies by selecting Build Dependencies\Project Dependencies from the context menu on a project in the solution explorer.

Version history