Dependency graph of Visual Studio projects

Question

I'm currently migrating a big solution (~70 projects) from VS 2005 + .NET 2.0 to VS 2008 + .NET 3.5. Currently I have VS 2008 + .NET 2.0.

The problem is that I need to move projects one by one to new .NET framework ensuring that no .NET 2.0 project references .NET 3.5 project. Is there any tool that would give me a nice graph of project dependencies?

Answer 1

I needed something similar, but didn't want to pay for (or install) a tool to do it. I created a quick PowerShell script that goes through the project references and spits them out in a yuml.me friendly-format instead:

Function Get-ProjectReferences ($rootFolder)
{
    $projectFiles = Get-ChildItem $rootFolder -Filter *.csproj -Recurse
    $ns = @{ defaultNamespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" }

    $projectFiles | ForEach-Object {
        $projectFile = $_ | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName
        $projectName = $_ | Select-Object -ExpandProperty BaseName
        $projectXml = [xml](Get-Content $projectFile)

        $projectReferences = $projectXml | Select-Xml '//defaultNamespace:ProjectReference/defaultNamespace:Name' -Namespace $ns | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Node | Select-Object -ExpandProperty "#text"

        $projectReferences | ForEach-Object {
            "[" + $projectName + "] -> [" + $_ + "]"
        }
    }
}

Get-ProjectReferences "C:\Users\DanTup\Documents\MyProject" | Out-File "C:\Users\DanTup\Documents\MyProject\References.txt"