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Basically, the question is: Where (and in which format) should I store textual developer documentation associated with my Visual Studio projects?
To elaborate: XML comments are great, but they don't cover all use cases. Sometimes, you'd like to describe the class architecture of the project at a high level, add usage notes to your library or just leave any other kind of message to future generations of developers working on this project.
I'd like to add these documents directly as files into the Visual Studio project, to ensure (a) that they are available to the developer without further searching and (b) they are version controlled (using the same svn/git/whatever repository as the source code).
Currently, I add a folder _Documentation to the project and use text files, but I'm not sure if this is the best solution. Visual Studio does not have an option for automatically word-wrapping text1, and manually fixing line breaks after each change is annoying. On the other hand, Word documents don't work well with version control, and TeX is too much of a hassle to set up and teach on each developer PC.
Is there a well-established best practice for this?
1 I know that there's Edit/Advanced/Word-Wrap, but this only affects the display, not the file itself.
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You can add existing files to your project by right-clicking on the Project node and selecting Add > Add Files.... Alternatively, to add an entire folder, select Add > Add Existing Folder.... The file browser is shown. It lets you search your system for the required item to add.
You can open any solution, project, folder or file in Visual Studio Code by simply right-clicking it in Solution Explorer and select Open in Visual Studio Code.
To add an item to a solution, on the context (right-click) menu of the solution node in Solution Explorer, select Add > New Item, or Add > Existing Item. A solution file is a structure for organizing projects in Visual Studio.
I just had the same issue - only I noticed that I was able to add a HTML-file. Once opened, simply switch to "Design" at the bottom of the screen. You may want to change Build Action from 'Content' to 'None'
As it is a hard-coded HTML document, it is also possible to use inline pictures (e.g. a diagram)
Also for my purpose (programming guide, architecture description. database use examples) I opted to create a separate project (_Documentation) as a Windows Forms, as this will allow me (or a new programmer) to have a running example.
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