How to set the reference path for the solution in Visual Studio?

Question

I have a C# solution contains many projects. Each project references some dlls in a specified folder. According to MSDN we could add the reference path for a project in project -> Properties -> Reference Paths. It will generate a .csproj.user file under the project folder with the content below:

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <ReferencePath>C:\References\bin\</ReferencePath>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

But this only works for one project alone. Is there a simple way to apply the same setting to all of the projects in the solution?

Answer 1

I found a blog post explaining how to do this.

Open the Package Manager Console (e.g. View | Other Windows | Package Manager Console) and use a script such as the following for relative paths:

$path = [System.IO.Path]; foreach ($proj in get-project -all) {$proj.Properties.Item("ReferencePath").Value="$($path::GetDirectoryName($proj.filename))\..\libs"}

or this for a single fixed project reference for all projects:

foreach ($proj in get-project -all) {$proj.Properties.Item("ReferencePath").Value="C:\lib"}