Editing a Visual Studio 2005 project file

[This is not really news, just wanted to publish it somewhere so I can refer to it]

So how do you do it then?

It is simple actually:

• (If the project file is under a locking source control provider e.g. Microsoft SourceSafe, you probably want to check out the project file first, as Visual Studio isn't smart enough to do it for you when you edit the file directly.)


• Right-click a project in the solution explorer


• Choose "Unload project"


• Right-click the same project, that now is grayed out and suffixed with (unavailable)


• Choose "Edit <filename>"


• Edit away ...


• Right-click the project, still suffixed with (unavailable)


• Choose "Reload project"

There you go!

Caveat: This doesn't work under the Express versions of Visual Studio. That is, the "Unload Project" menu item is absent, you can still use the editor with schema support.

Technorati : MSBuild, Visual Studio