To give you an update on MSBee's progress in sprint 2, we've already finished retargeting the CompileLicxFiles target. Now, I'm working on a prototype for the ResolveComReference task. In a later post, I'll discuss our approach and some of the issues I've hit thus far. For now, I just want to share a VS.NET tip I saw today. While building some code in VS 2003, I had a directory of files that I wanted to share among multiple projects. When I used AddExistingItem to add the files to each project, I wrongly assumed that the original paths to the files would be maintained. Instead, it turns out that VS will copy these files into the project directory and then add them. I spent a while tooling with VS and hacking my project files to try to force VS to add the original files but to no avail. Then I found this great post in Shawn A. Van Ness's blog on how to accomplish this.

In brief, it is possible to edit the project file directly although the changes aren't obvious. The easier option is to use AddExistingItem and select the file(s) to add in the dialog box. Instead of clicking Open, however, select the small arrow on the right side of the Open button and choose Link. This will open the files in your project without copying them, so you can add the same file in multiple projects.