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Creating Temporary Projects

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Menu:  Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> General
Versions:  2008,2010
Published:  3/28/2010
Code:  vstipProj0010

 

Ever just want to crank a project but not keep it around?  This is particularly useful if you are showing a colleague something real quick or doing ad-hoc demos.  All you have to do is go to Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> General and uncheck the "Save new projects when created" option:

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This has some interesting side effects.  For example, when you create a new project now it will NOT have the usual areas for save information at the bottom of the New Project dialog:

Before

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After

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The good news is you can now create projects all day long but can defer saving until you are ready.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2010
    Thanks for the excellent tip! I've deleted so many 'ConsoloApplication1' projects that were just quick tests. I remember the 'Snippet Compiler' but I'm just too spoiled with VS.

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2010
    It should be noted that this does not work for all project types. I was very confused when I went to create new WebApplication project and it did not store the files in a Temporary folder. I don't know what the difference is, but there you go.

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2010
    This is perfect for answering www.StackOverflow.com questions.

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2010
    I do not recommend this function.  If your visual studio processes are terminated abnormally such as power outage then you start up a new instance of visual studio, it wipes out entire Temporary Projects directory so that you cannot recover your projects.  How can you continue to work on temporary project?  How do you know where temporary projects are stored?  Visual studio team should fix this problem.

  • Anonymous
    November 01, 2010
    @t  the point of temporary projects is they are meant to be temporary or you can save them anytime you feel like it.  So if you feel a power outage is possible and you have code you want to save then you can always save the project.  At that point the AutoRecover feature will kick in and it will keep saving changes according to your settings.

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2011
    I cannot agree this.  The problem is VS always clean up temporary folder when it starts up.  VS should clean up the folder when the temporary project is closed with users intension.  I am saying closing project should be trigger and starting VS should not be trigger to wipe the folder.