Visual Studio

Welcome to the Visual Studio UserVoice site. Let us know what you would like to see in future versions of the Visual Studio suite of products. This site is for suggestions and ideas. If you need to file a bug, visit the Visual Studio Connect site: http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio.

ASP.NET Runtime/Web Tooling suggestions have moved! All your ideas, including your votes, have been transferred and are searchable in the ASP.Net Uservoice forum. Please submit any new ASP.NET Runtime/Web Tooling suggestions, or vote on existing suggestions by going to http://aspnet.uservoice.com.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks – Deon Herbert
Visual Studio Team

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  1. Fix 260 character file name length limitation

    The 260 character limit on file paths really gets in the way of having a deeply-nested project hierarchy. It's only there as backwards compatibility with the old school APIs, and has no place in any sort of modern development environment.

    We should be able to work with file paths of whatever size we want.

    2,271 votes
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      71 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
    • Ask before moving files in Solution Explorer tree.

      Accidentally moving files to random directory really annoys.

      525 votes
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        under review  ·  26 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
      • Creating Queries - Token for Current Iteration

        When creating a work item query, you are given the option to select the iteration path for which the query is to return results for. It will be fantastic if a token was provided such as [Active Iteration] and you can specify the active iteration manually, or TFS calculating it via the Start/End dates

        420 votes
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          under review  ·  15 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
        • Better project reload

          If you work with DVCS like Git or Mercurial you always switch back and forth between branches. This always cause Visual Studio to reload projects even if they were not changed. Even if project is changed, it should not be that long. And of course it should not ask to reload each project.

          356 votes
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            8 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
          • Add web deployment projects to VS11

            I've only spent 5mins in VS11 so far, but it seems like Website Application projects addon from (2005/2008/2010 has been integrated). However Website Deployment projects don't seem to be. It would be nice for these to finally get some official attention.

            299 votes
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              11 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
            • Support Solution Templates, which include a number of Project Templates

              For any non-trivial solution, I will have multiple projects. Typically, since I try to write loosely coupled, testable, code, I have projects like:
              Core
              Infrastructure
              UnitTests
              UI

              For a given platform, say ASPNET MVC, I would like to define a standard solution template that includes the projects. Ideally it would also be easy to customize the template so that the individual projects have certain nuget projects in them (e.g. nunit/xunit), but that can probably already be done separately from this feature.

              149 votes
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                3 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
              • Support more than one .NET language within a project

                I would like to use C# or VB.NET along side F# within the same project without being forced to place that code in it's own project. The language of each code file would be determined by it's file extension as it is now. They all compile to IL, so it shouldn't be a problem to link them all together into one DLL.

                For backwards compatibility with existing .csproj, .vbproj and .fsproj files, there would probably need to be a new project format -- something like .netproj that would support multiple language code files.

                89 votes
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                  8 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                • Don't kill Setup Projects in the next VS (or maybe better include a complete solution)

                  I understand that VS Setup Projects are supposed to be killed? That they will not be available in the next version of VS?

                  Unless something is to replace it, that's better, don't force us to go outside of Microsoft/VS just to build an install. Building an awesome app isn't worth much if we can't get it installed on our users PC's. Yes, there are third party products, but doesn't that seem silly that we have to go to someone else to build an install package to install our apps on a Microsoft OS? MS VS > 3rd Party > MS…

                  75 votes
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                    13 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                  • Allow bulk update target .NET framework version for all projects in a solution

                    The solution (.sln) properties allows bulk update of Configuration and Platform properties. It should also allow updating the TargetFramework property.

                    75 votes
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                      2 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                    • Add a switch to MSBuild to force being strict about only building projects in the solution

                      Currently MSBuild determines all project dependencies and builds those projects regardless of whether they're in the solution being built. This means MSBuild successfully builds the solution but the solution fails to build in Visual Studio.

                      It would be great to have a switch for MSBuild that would force it to only build the projects in the solution.

                      Scenario:
                      The solution AAA.sln has project Foo.csproj which references Bar.csproj (also in the solution). Bar.csproj lives in another solution (BBB.sln) and was modified by a developer to now reference BarHelper.csproj. The developer checked in the changes to BBB.sln but didn’t realise AAA.sln would…

                      33 votes
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                        3 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                      • Create a Solution Items Folder for dependencies

                        Solution folders are handy for organizing (and sometimes hiding) projects in complex solutions. For this usage, it makes sense that the Solution Folders aren't required to map to physical folders. Another important use is for solution level dependencies: external assemblies referenced by multiple projects, documentation, key files, and such.

                        The biggest reason I hear from developers for not putting these items in a solution folder is that the physical folder mapping is a mess. Most of these developers advocate for adding a "Dependencies" class library project and marking it to not build.

                        Let's just have a container for solution items…

                        28 votes
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                          1 comment  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                        • Allow assembly references to switch based on configuration

                          This works already for project references but not file references. Reference debug locations in debug build, release locations in release build.

                          28 votes
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                            4 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                          • enable developers to create Subfolder-Structures within BIDS SSRS Projects

                            enable developers to create Subfolder-Structures within BIDS SSRS Projects. Currently with VS2008 BIDS it is not possible to organize reports with folders in Visual studio. If you have SSRS projects with many reports, and you want to deploy reports to different subfolders on ssrs server this would be really helpful!

                            27 votes
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                              2 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                            • Support OutputType of .netmodule

                              .NET claims support for .netmodule, but it's support is abysmal. VS doesn't let you switch to them, and when you do it manually project references fail to resolve. MSBuild doesn't support project references to them either. Even after all that is worked around, Csc.exe itself fails to find extension methods in .netmodules.

                              27 votes
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                                0 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                              • Keep project references for projects that have been removed from the solution

                                When removing a project which is referenced as a project reference by other projects in the solution, these project references are deleted. This is unfortunate since the same projects may appear in other solutions, and their compilation would break in those solutions. I suggest these references are kept, and have a warning associated with them (the black/yellow exclamation mark)

                                26 votes
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                                  2 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                • x86 and x64 libraries in .Net projects

                                  Nowadays developers of .net have to release 2 versions of software that imports some calls of dlls
                                  - x86 (where all projects targets x86 CPU, otherwise it will not work on x64)
                                  - x64

                                  Could you make possible to use x64 and x86 libraries with Any CPU and let the platform to choose which to load ?

                                  19 votes
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                                    0 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                  • Allow referencing all projects of another solution to extend usability with large scale solutionsns!

                                    When working on large software projects with loads of c# projects in one solution we ended up creating multiple solution sets (one full version, one focusing on tests, one for installers...) in order to keep edit & load performance acceptable.
                                    These solutions with redundant projects configurations become incompatible over time (when projects and references change) and it gets hard and unhandy to keep them in sync.
                                    It would be nice to be able to build up meta solutions linking partial solutions (or project collections) to improve the projects management experience.

                                    18 votes
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                                      0 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                    • Add the ability to set a Project's root directory

                                      Sometimes I want to organize my C++ project so that the source code is not directly underneath my project folder. For example:

                                      /ide/MyProject.vcxproj
                                      /src/MySource.cpp

                                      When I click "Show All Files" in Solution Explorer it only shows the files that are under the /ide directory. I want to be able to configure this to show the files under the /src directory instead.

                                      If I attempt to manually add files to the project, then the directory structure under /src is not displayed in Solution Explorer.

                                      I want to be able to specify the root directory of my source code, and to show…

                                      16 votes
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                                        0 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                      • Integrating Office 365 Users to TFS

                                        Since many of us using Office 365, it is good idea to integrate with O 365 users to TFS.

                                        When I try to assign the user to the project I found that only live id user can be assigned.

                                        This cannot happen in the corporate level, since they should use only corporate email ids.

                                        Please validate this request and make it available to use TFS asap.

                                        15 votes
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                                          1 comment  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
                                        • Put a "Reload Solution" button on the message box that appears when projects change on disk.

                                          When multiple projects change on disk (because of a source control fetch, usually), you generally want to reload the solution rather than responding to multiple "reload project" dialogs.

                                          13 votes
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                                            2 comments  ·  Project  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
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