Clone a .NET solution in no time
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, structure and setup that isn’t suitable for a shared library.
The biggest problem with cloning a .NET solution by manually copying it, is that you have to replace everything that has to do with the old namespace, which takes a LOT of time.
For instance, consider a solution X, where X is the base namespace, that has several projects like X.Core, X.Domain, etc. To clone X into a new solution called Y, we must rename the solution, all its projects, and all references to X, including in code and text.
Since manually doing this takes time and is error-prone, I have created an application that makes cloning .NET solutions easy. It’s called Cloney and can be downloaded here.
With Cloney, you just have to point out a source folder that contains the solution to clone, as well as a target folder to where you want to clone it.
When you press the “Clone” button, 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 will end up with a new, clean solution without any traces of any old settings, version control-related folders & files, etc.
Feel free to download Cloney here and let me know what you think.