How to change whole solution's project's name in Visual Studio?

Question

I have ASP.NET CORE C# project.

I want to change my solution name and whole project's name.

For Example:

OldSolution.OldName // this is Solution

OldSolution.OldName.Project1
OldSolution.OldName.Project2
OldSolution.OldName.Project3

to

ChangedName.NewName // this is solution

ChangedName.NewName.Project1
ChangedName.NewName.Project2
ChangedName.NewName.Project3

with all namespace changing, name of projects which referenced to other projects ( when i look at references of a project, referenced projects are still same name. They have not been changed. )

can i do that?

Answer 1

I was also struggling with this problem and didn't find automated way to do this. I had to do it manually like that:

Renaming the Solution. Easiest part. Go to Solution Explorer (from menu View -> Solution Explorer), select the solution and then hit F4 (or from menu – View -> Properties Window), select the Name property and type the new name and then press ENTER. This will not change the name of the folder in which the entire solution exists. If you want to change that (and I did wanted to do that), you have to close Visual Studio and then rename that folder. If you open again Visual Studio and open the solution by Browsing after the new name (File -> Open -> Project/Solution ..), you will see that the new name for the solution has been changed.

This is how you can try to do it with projects:

• Right-click the project in Solution Explorer, select Rename, and enter the new name

• Right-click the project again and select Properties. Change the "Assembly name" and "Default namespace" on the Application tab.

• When you have ReSharper installed, right-click the project again and select Refactor -> Adjust Namespaces. Accept the changes.

• Change the AssemblyTitle and AssemblyProduct in Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs

• Delete bin and obj directories in Windows Explorer

• Open the SLN file (with a text editor such as Notepad++) and change the path to the project (there should be multiple places).

• Open the Solution again. Clean and Rebuild the project.

Answer 2

To rename a solution

1. In Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right-click the solution node and then select Rename from the context menu.
2. Type the new name for your solution.

To rename a project

3. In Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right-click the project node and then select Rename from the context menu.

4. Type the new name for your solution.

To change default namespace : Go to Project-> Properties-> Default Namespace and enter the name you wish to have.

To change namespaces of old files please refer this stackoverflow post

Replace in Files (Ctrl+Shift+H) will replace old namespace with new one !

To update references : you need to add references again , i don't think there is a simpler way. Besides deleting and adding references is pretty straightforward

Hope this helps !

Answer 3

In .net core 2.2 there is a file _ViewImports.cshtml through an exception when you try to rename a namespace , to overcome this rename the namespace in this file manually first (no need for refactor -> rename) and then rename the namespace` from elsewhere using refactor -> rename. Hope this help.

Answer 4

I was able to change my entire solution today by doing the following (keep in mind I purposely wanted to change every name from the old to new (including string literals).

• Notepad++ Find and Replace entire solution folder with the old and new name
• Manually change folder names / project names

This will only work if you want to change absolutely everything from the old to new name but its a bit faster and less complicated.