MsBuildResyncProjectReferenceGuid

Resyncs the Project Reference Guid to what is in the referenced project.

Background

In a large source tree it is very possible to get into a situation where the Guid of the Referenced Project has changed.

Consider the following:

Developer duplicates ProjectGuid in another Project
Developer tries to load both of these Projects into the same Visual Studio Solution
Visual Studio choses one of the projects as the "loser" and regenerates its Guid.
The "loser" project was referenced (via ProjectReferences) in projects other than those loaded into the solution when Visual Studio "fixed" the duplication.

These additional reference projects now have the wrong Guid in them. However if the relative path is correct Visual Studio and MSBuild will still successfully "build". HOWEVER all of the configuration information stored within any other Solution Files is now invalid. This is because the Guid is used in the Solution File Format as a Key when setting configurations.

When To Use This Tool

This tool scans the given directory and resyncs the Guid within the ProjectReference to what is actually in the project file.

As a side effect of this process if the Project that is referenced in ProjectReference no longer exists this utility throws an InvalidOperationException. If you know that the project exists (but perhaps has just been relocated to a new location) you can use the sister utility https://github.com/aolszowka/MsBuildProjectReferenceFixer

If the project was completely deleted you should remove the reference all together to avoid MsBuild becoming confused and attempting to build something that does not exist.

Usage

There are now two ways to run this tool:

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

Usage: C:\ProjectDirectory\ [-validate]

Scans given directory for MsBuild Projects; Resycing the ProjectReference
Project Guid to the referenced Project.

               <>            The directory to scan for MSBuild Projects
      --validate             Indicates if this tool should only be run in
                               validation mode
  -?, -h, --help             Show this message and exit

Hacking

The most likely change you will want to make is changing the supported project files. In theory this tool should support any MSBuild Project Format that utilizes a ProjectGuid.

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

The tool should also support those projects that utilize the same ProjectReference format as CSPROJ formats.

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.