Dynamically creating a project in VS2005 using C #

You can also create and edit msbuild files programmatically using the msbuild api. See here for more details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.build.buildengine.project.aspx

Here's an example that creates a project that compiles a single .cs file and references an external assembly:

Engine engine=new Engine();
engine.BinPath=RuntimeEnvironment.GetRuntimeDirectory();
Project project=engine.CreateNewProject();

project.AddNewImport(@"$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets", null);

BuildPropertyGroup props=project.AddNewPropertyGroup(false);
props.AddNewProperty("AssemblyName", "myassembly");
props.AddNewProperty("OutputType", "Library");

BuildItemGroup items=project.AddNewItemGroup();
items.AddNewItem("Reference", "Some.Assembly");
items.AddNewItem("Compile", "somefile.cs");

project.Save("myproject.csproj")

      

        
        
        
      

    

If you want to be able to create the same things over and over, Visual Studio supports templates. It even has macros that expand when the file is created from a template. For example, $ username $ will be replaced with the name of the logged in user when the file is generated from the template.

If this is not what you are trying to do, then you can use Visual Studio's extensibility to control project creation.

Take a look at the source code of this CodePlex project: STSDev

Ultimately it's a WinForm application that dynamically builds a Visual Studio solution with a project.

It is designed for Sharepoint, but the idea it uses is what you are looking for.

Whale

Visual Studio project templates can be created, allowing you to create child projects within them. This will not be really dynamic as you decide which child project templates to run at the time of project creation.

To be truly dynamic, you need to do one of the following:

• Programmatically create a csproj / vbproj file along with all the required elements. This will include linking, etc. In XML

Or:

• Create a project template and download through the VS project creation mechanisms to call the project creation method. It can be very tricky as I found 0 documentation on the subject and learned how to do it by reverse engineering from MS Project MVC Project create master DLL (as this will dynamically create Unit Test project)