Enabling Sane Project and Solution Structure

One of the constant pains of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual SourceSafe is the strong tie between solution, file system, and VSS structures. If you only ever have a single large solution with all of your projects underneath it, this never becomes apparent. If, however, you have several core components that need to be shared across several distinct solutions (systems/applications/whatever), things get gross. Visual Studio likes the solution to be at a higher level in VSS and the file system than all the projects contained in it. Once you have a project that needs to be in more than one solution (i.e., have more than one parent folder), this is impossible. Ideally I'd like my file system to look something like:

c:\projects (all solution files live here)
c:\projects\sharedlib1
c:\projects\sharedlib2
...
c:\projects\websites\site1
c:\projects\websites\site2
etc.

with a similar VSS structure:

$/ (all solutions here)
$/sharedlib1
$/sharedlib2
...

Here's what I do when creating a new solution and project to make this work:

1. Create a blank solution
   File->New Project
   Other Project Types/Visual Studio Solutions/Blank Solution
   
   Don't check "Add to Source Control"
   Location: c:\projects
   Name: whatever (application name)
   


2. File System Surgery
   File->Save As...
   c:\projects\whatever.sln
   Delete the subdirectory under projects (should be c:\projects\whatever\)
   


3. Add solution to VSS
   Right click on sln, Add to Source Control
   Leave name alone (will be whatever.root)
   Location $/
   


4. VSS Surgery
   Start the VSS Client
   Drag and drop Whatever.sln and Whatever.vssscc from c:\projects into $\ in VSS
   In Visual Studio, go to File->Source Control->Change Source Control
   There should be line line listed that says "Solution: Whatever.sln"
   Click the elipsis ("...") in the Server Binding column
   Pick $/
   Hit Ok twice
   In VSS, right click on $/whatever.root and pick delete (check the box to destroy permanently)
   Close VSS
   

When adding new projects, always choose "C:\projects" for Location
When adding new websites, always choose "C:\projects\websites" for Location
and they will automatically be added to the right place in VSS

And that's it. Basically I change the binding root of the solution from the automatically created "whatever.root" folder to its parent, allowing multiple solutions to live in the same directory and in effect share the same binding root.