dotnet / dotnet/project-system

Visual Studio Should (please 😊) Be Able To Guess Startup Project

Open
#3,578 7 comments 13 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Feature-Debugging Triage-Approved
Dominant language
C#
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Forks
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Description

A large number of solutions have a single startup project and multiple library projects. Every time I get a clean copy of such a solution from source control Visual Studio seemingly sets a random project as the startup project. Which you can guarantee is never the actual startup project. Then you press F5 and obviously VS has a little whinge say you as it can't start a .dll.

This has beena big bear for years. Especially with large solutions, where you then have to scroll through the Solution Explorer to find and set the startup project.

It works be cool if VS could make a pretty sensible guess at the correct startup project for the majority of solutions.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No file, test, or entry point is named. Start by locating the project-system handling for startup projects and determine how a solution with one startup-capable project and multiple library projects is represented; done means Visual Studio selects the sensible startup project instead of a library after checkout.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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