Does Visual Studio solution (.sln) files have any hint to the machine they were created on?

Question

My interest is in the first place regarding solution files containing C# projects.

Is there anything, like the exact .NET framework version, user names and passwords, any other information that can identify the machine the solution file was created on?

Answer 1

No. Take a look at the file. It just enumerates all projects in your solution and their build configuration.

Places where you can find computer-specific stuff might be the project files and the .suo file (which you usually don't send to version control) and the PDBs of the compiled assemblies (they contain file paths, etc.).

Answer 2

No, as Patrick Hofman has already answered, .sln file just contains a list of .csproj project files.

However,

1. Exact target .NET Framework version is stored in .csproj files.

2. Username isn't stored anywhere if you do not specify it yourself, except for different places like assembly references, PDB files, different configuration files, if you use user-specific pathes like C:\Users\yourusername\My Documents\Visual Studio Projects\ConsoleApplication1 etc.

   Also, note that there is a thing like file metadata. It is not related to Visual Studio at all, but it can store information about file creator. As for me, I see my computer name and domain username in Details tab of file properties.

3. Connection strings are stored in .config (App.config, Web.config etc) files. You definitely wouldn't want to commit your login and password to a public database.