I just (re-)joined a company to work on some C++ projects. I’m looking at the files and I’m trying to figure out what all the Visual Studio related files are. Many I suspect are orphans from previous versions of the IDE.
I’ve listed all the file extensions below and annotated the ones I think I understand. If can provide more information about the individual files or how they different files are related, I would be very appreciative. I’d also like to hear advice on dealing with these files under some version control system (we use Visual SourceSafe for now).
.dsp – Developer Studio project (obsolete?)
.dsw – Developer Studio workspace (obsolete?)
.ncb – No compile browser file (for intellisense?)
.sln – Solution
.suo – Solution user options
.vcproj – VC++ project file
.vcproj.$DOMAIN.$USER.user – huh?
.vcproj.vspscc – ?
.vsscc – ?
.vssscc – ?
.vc08 – ?
What drives me really crazy are the files that are binary rather than simple text files. Why does MS hate text files so much? Sigh…
-cr
.dsp – Obsolete
.dsw – Obsolete
.ncb – for intellisense (should not be in source control)
.sln – Solution
.suo – Solution user options (should not be in source control)
.vcproj – VC++ project file
.vcproj.$DOMAIN.$USER.user – Project user options (should not be in source control)
.vcproj.vspscc – source control file
.vsscc – source control file
.vssscc – source control file
VSS = Visual Source Safe
SCC = Source Code Control (The TLA for the source control plugin architecture in VS)