Visual-studio – Visual Studio 2005 context menu launches server explorer: why

There are two reasons I've encountered that cause this behavior.

The first is old source control bindings. If you have a project that used to be managed by another source control tool, it might have leftover bindings in the project file. Open the project file, and change the following settings from something like this:

• SccProjectName="$/Team/Platform/Projects/MyProject"
• SccAuxPath="http://teamFoundationServer.example.com:8080"
• SccLocalPath="."
• SccProvider="{88888888-4444-4444-4444-BBBBBBBBBBBB}"

to this:

• SccProjectName="SAK"
• SccAuxPath="SAK"
• SccLocalPath="SAK"
• SccProvider="SAK"

Different project types are defined in different ways. The above example is from a .vcproj, C# projects are in XML, VB looks like something else, but the meanings are the same. Simply set all four values to the constant string "SAK" and Visual Studio will automatically handle source control. See Alin Constantin's blog for details.

I haven't yet discovered the root of the other reason, but the project that is giving me trouble is also CppUnit 1.12.0! I'll keep digging and post my findings.

John

In the project XML files:

Console applications contain:

<OutputType>Exe</OutputType>

WinForms applications contain:

<OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>

Library (.dll) projects contain:

<OutputType>Library</OutputType>

and do NOT contain a

<ProjectTypeGuids>

ASP.NET and WCF projects contain:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{603c0e0b-db56-11dc-be95-000d561079b0};{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>
<OutputType>Library</OutputType>

The GUIDs do something to define exactly what type of project it is. The ones above were taken from an ASP.NET app. They exist in WCF projects too, and flipping around the GUIDs can fool Vis Studio into changing the project type when you open it.