Why Beer House has a solution (sln) file

rpcasey001 · March 5th, 2009, 07:13 PM

I am new to ASP.Net. I noticed that my folder based website does not have a solution (sln) file, but the beer house folder based website has a solution (sln) file.

Why does the beer house website have a solution (sln) file and my website does not? How do I get my website contained in a solution?

Regards,

Ryan

Lee Dumond · March 5th, 2009, 07:51 PM

Your website does have a solution file. It is probably located in the Projects folder for Visual Studio.

By default, VS will not show your solution file unless you have more than one project in your solution. The BeerHouse solution has more than one project, so that's why you can see it. If you added another project to your site, you would see your solution file also.

Lee Dumond · March 6th, 2009, 05:54 PM

By the way, you can alter this default behavior and always show your solution, even if there is only one project, by going to Tools|Options|Projects and Solutions and checking "Always show solution".

Lee Dumond · March 6th, 2009, 06:02 PM

I almost forgot --

I also would mention that what a lot of developers do is, instead of just creating a web site and letting VS put the solution file in the projects folder, is to always create a blank solution first.

Give the solution a name, and make sure the "Always create folder for solution" option is checked. This will create a solution with no projects or web sites in it, inside of its own folder.

Then "Add" a web site to the solution, placing it in the folder created by the solution.

This will let you control where the solution is placed, and lets you carry the solution and all associated files to another folder, drive, or even another computer by just copying the folder. You can even zip it and email it to someone. In fact, that is exactly how the BeerHouse was created in the first place.

Hope that helps.