Question

I know that this is really not a smart question, but I have some trouble understanding some working of Visual Studio 2010.

Programming a Windows form I needed to move a class (let’s say: class x) in a source (let’s say: a x.cs) file that was included in the main namespace and assembly to a different project (and assembly) in a different namespace. The latter is a dll aimed to gather utility classes. Probably I did this in a wrong way.

Symptoms is: When in the main form (code, not design) pressing F12 with the mouse over the constructor of the X class results in a new source “from metadata” being shown, including a class declaration (but still I can open the source code clicking on the right mouse button and selecting “show source code”). It seems that VS is unable to find the proper source code in the solution.

My questions:

1. How can I recover from this having F12 points to the proper methods?
2. More in general, what is the correct method to move code within different projects and/or assemblies?

Answer 1

I’ve just had a go at duplicating the described issue but it’s working fine for me. Let me describe the steps I took and maybe you’ll spot where you have done something different.

1. Create new solution.
2. Add new Windows Forms application called FormsApp. This gives me a form called Form1 with a default namespace of FormsApp.
3. Created a class called Util in a file called util.cs in the FormsApp project. It gets the same namespace of FormsApp.
4. If I create an instance of the Util class in the Form1 constructor, I can hit F12 to be brought to the definition of Util as expected.
5. Created a new Class Library called Utility in the solution.
6. It’s possible to move files a number of ways but I just clicked on the util.cs file in Solution Explorer and dragged it down to the Utility project. This will copy the file but leave the original in place. Maybe you’ve copied your files differently?
7. When the original is deleted, you should get a build error if you try to compile. This is to be expected since the FormsApp project doesn’t know anything about the Util class in the newly-added Utility project.
8. Add a reference to the Utility project in the FormsApp project in Solution Explorer.
9. If you try to build now then it should succeed. Pressing F12 in the Form1 constructor brings me to the definition of the Util class as expected even though I didn’t change the namespace of the Util class.

If it helps clarify things, here are a few images:

Solution Explorer:

Form1 Constructor:

Util class: