MsBuildFindDuplicateProjectFileNames

Utility to find MSBuild Project System Files which have duplicate file names.

Background

In the MSBuild Project System the file name of the Project File is inserted into any project that has a ProjectReference tag in the Name Property (See Microsoft Docs: Common MSBuild Project Items - ProjectReference)

This only becomes a problem when you attempt to add these projects into a single Solution File as Visual Studio will alert you to the duplicated project names.

When To Use This Tool

You can use this tool to find duplicate MSBuild Project System file names in a source tree.

Note that if you rename a file you will need to update all MsBuild Project System files that had a ProjectReference to the renamed file, see the sister tool https://github.com/aolszowka/MsBuildProjectReferenceFixer for a utility to fix this. In addition you will also need to fix any Visual Studio Solution that was generated, see the sister tool https://github.com/aolszowka/VisualStudioSolutionFixer to fix this.

Usage

There are now two ways to run this tool:

1. (Compiled Executable) Invoke the tool via MsBuildFindDuplicateProjectFileNames and pass the arguments.
2. (Dotnet Tool) Install this tool using the following command dotnet tool install MsBuildFindDuplicateProjectFileNames (assuming that you have the nuget package in your feed) then invoke it via dotnet project-findduplicatefilenames

In both cases the flags to the tooling are identical:

Usage: C:\DirectoryWithProjects [-xml]

Scans given directory for MsBuild Projects; reporting any duplicate Project
Names it finds.

Arguments:

              <>            The directory to scan for MSBuild Projects
      --xml                  Produce Output in XML Format
  -?, -h, --help             Show this message and exit

Hacking

The most likely change you will want to make is changing the supported project files. Because this tooling is operating on file names any extension is supported.

See DuplicateProjectFileNames.GetProjectsInDirectory(string) for the place to modify this.

Contributing

Pull requests and bug reports are welcomed so long as they are MIT Licensed.

License

This tool is MIT Licensed.

Third Party Licenses

This project uses other open source contributions see LICENSES.md for a comprehensive listing.