Clone a .NET solution in no time
Jul 24, 2011
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When working with .NET, I sometimes find myself wanting to just clone a solution instead of setting everything up from scratch over and over again.
For instance, you may want to clone a project stub, where you can reuse code and structure and setup that are not suitable to be extracted into a base library.
The biggest problem with cloning a .NET solution by copying it, is that you have to replace everything that has to do with the old namespace. For instance, if you have a solution X, where X is the base namespace, X can contain several projects, such as X.Core, X.Domain etc. If you now clone X and call the clone Y, the new solution and all its projects must be renamed as well. The same goes for any other references to the name X.
I have therefore created an application that makes cloning a .NET solution easy. It’s currently in beta and can be downloaded here.
With Cloney, you just have to point out a source folder that contains a solution you want to clone, as well as a target folder to where you want to clone it. When you then press “Clone”, Cloney will:
- Copy all folders and files from the source folder
- Ignore certain folders, such as bin, obj, .git, .svn, _Resharper*
- Ignore certain file types, such as *.suo, *.user, *,vssscc
- Replace the old namespace with the new one everywhere
You end up with a fresh, clean solution without any traces of old settings, version control-related folders and files etc.
Feel free to download Cloney and give it a try and le me know what you think.