Comment by bgarbiak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bgarbiak | Hacker News Reader

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Is there a simple way to use VS without the Solution files? Templates and Solutions are fine for creating a entirely new project, but if I have to work on someone's else code I'd prefer to have a basic "File Explorer" over Solution Explorer / Team Explorer. My attempts to create a new Solution file for an existing code ended with a new directory (or a couple of them) with a boilerplate code... Am I missing something obvious here?

Also, I've noticed that if I open a few files the IDE creates "Virtual Solution", but it's hard to tell which files are there, and which don't. For example: TypeScript files are, but no such luck with SASS.

P.S. And a CMD/Terminal in a panel (akin to the Output panel, but with an... well, input) - is that possible?

Hi bgarbiak,

You can use the "From Existing Node.js Code" project template to create a project from a folder, but the project file itself is a requirement for visual studio and also allows us to include helpful metadata (whether or not to analyze a directory, etc - most IDEs/text editors include a project file for this very purpose - they just hide it a little better). That said, at some point we'd like to change things up so that the project does feel more similar to the folder/file experience you might expect.

This is to change the project file to be more "transparent". https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/1855

There's also another issue to directly open a folder without requiring the user to take steps to create the solution/project. https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/workitem/209

Additionally, like rlp mentioned - make sure that "show all files" is turned on so that you can see everything in the folder, not just files you've defined as being a part of your project.

Hope that helps - let me know if you have any other questions.

Try clicking the Show All Files button at the top of the solution explorer. It will show everything by folder, which I think is what you're looking for.

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