SlnAggregate

Aggregate all C# projects from several solutions in a global solution replacing package references by project references when possible. It is written in C# and thanks to .Net Core and the dotnet tools, it is cross platform.

Don't hesitate to post issue, pull request on the project or to fork and improve the project.

License and credits

SlnAggregate project is written by Xavier Solau. It's licensed under the MIT license.

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Installation

You can checkout this Github repository or you can use the NuGet package:

Install editing your project file (csproj):

<DotNetCliToolReference Include="SoloX.SlnAggregate" Version="1.0.0-alpha.4" />

Or using the dotnet tool install command:

Install with dotnet:

# Install globally:
dotnet tool install -g SoloX.SlnAggregate --version 1.0.0-alpha.4

# or in a specific 'target' folder
dotnet tool install SoloX.SlnAggregate --version 1.0.0-alpha.4 --tool-path target

How to use it

In order to generate the shadow files, you will need to type:

SlnAggregate aggregate YourSolutionRootPath
or you can filter the folders you work on:
SlnAggregate aggregate YourSolutionRootPath --filters path1;path2;path3

Once your changes are done, you can push your changes back to the original project files:

SlnAggregate push YourSolutionRootPath
or you can filter the folders you work on:
SlnAggregate push YourSolutionRootPath --filters path1;path2;path3

The use case

Let's say that your are working on a project that has got Nuget dependencies and you need to make some changes related to your current project on one or several of those dependencies. In this situation this is some time convenient to work with a single solution containing all projects and replacing package references by project references when possible instead of working on several solutions separately. This tool will help you to aggregate all projects into one solution.

Let's take an example:

We are working on a project MyProject defined in MyProjectSolution that is using a Nuget MyNuget defined in MyNugetSolution. Our working directory is MyRoot.

It gives us this working directory structure:

MyRoot
 | MyProjectSolution
 | | MyProjectSolution.sln
 | | MyProject
 | | | MyProject.csproj # Referencing the nuget MyNuget
 | MyNugetSolution
 | | MyNugetSolution.sln
 | | MyNuget
 | | | MyNuget.csproj # Defining the nuget MyNuget

The SlnAggregate tool will generate a global solution file MyRoot.sln referencing the projects through "shadow" project files. Those "shadow" files are in fact the project images modified in a way that the package references are replaced when possible by the corresponding project references.

The result of this generation will give us this structure:

MyRoot
 | MyRoot.sln (Generated)
 | MyProjectSolution
 | | MyProjectSolution.sln
 | | MyProject
 | | | MyProject.csproj # Referencing the nuget MyNuget
 | | | MyProject.Shadow.csproj # (Generated) Referencing the project MyNuget.Shadow.csproj
 | MyNugetSolution
 | | MyNugetSolution.sln
 | | MyNuget
 | | | MyNuget.csproj # Defining the nuget MyNuget and referenced by MyProject.csproj
 | | | MyNuget.Shadow.csproj # (Generated) Referenced by MyProject.Shadow.csproj

It is now possible to open the MyRoot.sln and to work on the projects as if they were defined in the same solution from the beginning.

Warning: If we add projects or if we change references in the shadow project files, we will have to manually report the changes into the original project files.