“Add as Link” for folders in Visual Studio projects

Question

In Visual Studio, we can "Add as link" to add a link to a file in another project in the solution.

Is there any way to do this for entire folders, so that an entire folder in project A will be visible in project B, without the need to manually link to new items in that folder?

Answer 1

As this blogpost stated, it is possible.

<ItemGroup>
    <Compile Include="any_abs_or_rel_path\**\*.*">
        <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
    </Compile>
</ItemGroup>

But be aware, the files will not be copied.

Answer 2

In VS2012 and later, you can drag a folder to another project with alt key pressed. It's just the same as adding each file as link manually but faster.

upd: Consider using Shared Projects if you are using VS2013 update 2 (with Shared Project Reference Manager) or VS2015.

Answer 3

One addition to the answer from mo. and the comment from Marcus, if you are linking content items you will need to include the file extension:

<ItemGroup>
  <Compile Include="any_abs_or_rel_path\**\*.*">
    <Link>%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
  </Compile>
</ItemGroup>

Answer 4

Regarding the part of the original query to have a linked folder appear in the IDE, it is kind of possible to achieve this so there is a folder in the solution explorer with all linked files inside, instead of all the files appearing in the root of the solution. To achieve this, include the addition:

  <ItemGroup>
    <Compile Include="..\anypath\**\*.*">
      <Link>MyData\A\%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
    </Compile>
  </ItemGroup>

This will include all files from the linked directory in a new folder in the solution explorer called MyData. The 'A' in the code above can be called anything but must be there in order for the folder to appear.

Answer 5

If you want to add a folder as a reference and you don't want to compile it, use:

<Content Include="any_path\**\*.*">
  <Link>folder_in_B_project\%(RecursiveDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)</Link>
</Content>

Answer 6

Bust out the shell and add a symbolic link.

runas Administrator then

mklink /d LinkToDirectory DirectoryThatIsLinkedTo

BAM symbolic link!

/d specifies directory link.

Works in Vista on up out of the box. Can be backported to XP.

Documentation here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194%28WS.10%29.aspx

For those not familiar with symbolic links, it's essentially a pointer to another file or directory. It's transparent to applications. One copy on disk, several ways to address it. You can also make a "hard link" which is not a pointer to another address, but an actual file ID entry in NTFS for the same file.

NOTE: as stated in the comments, this would only work on the computer where you created the symlink and wouldn't work in a Version Control System like git.