What does the .csproj file do?

c# visual-studio project file-extension csproj
Mircea picture Mircea · Jun 22, 2011 · Viewed 36.1k times · Source

Usually a C# project has a .csproj file associated with it. What is that file for? What data does it contain?

Answer

ChrisF picture ChrisF · Jun 22, 2011

Basically the .csproj file contains the list of files in your project, plus the references to system assemblies etc.

There are a whole bunch of settings - Visual Studio version, project type, Assembly name, Application Icon, Target Culture, Installation Url,...

Everything you need to build your project. While you could assume that you need everything in the current folder, having an explicit list allows you to organise them logically both on the disk and in the project so you can more easily find the files you want.

It's just XML so you can open it in your favourite text editor and take a look.

You get one .csproj file per assembly and the .sln (solution file) ties together all the assemblies that make up your project.

Related questions

Visual Studio conditional project reference based on a constant

For user authorization, I only want to include a specific module for each user. So I configured Conditional Compilation like this <DefineConstants>TRACE;DEBUG;SAMPLECONSTANT1</DefineConstants> and edited the project file like this: <ProjectReference Include="..\…

Read More
How do I remedy "The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document." warning?

A C# desktop application on the express edition worked, but then it didn't work 5 seconds later. I tried the following: Ensure debug configuration, debug flag, and full debug information are set on all assemblies. Delete all bin and obj folders …

Read More
Writing to output window of Visual Studio

I am trying to write a message to the output window for debugging purposes. I searched for a function like Java's system.out.println(""). I tried Debug.Write, Console.Write, and Trace.Write. It does not give an error, but …

Read More