How to tell if an app is a Winforms app or WPF app by looking at project properties

Question

When I look at the project properties in Visual Studio for my particular project, there is a field called Output Type which says Windows Application. Does that automatically tell me that it's a WinForms application? I'm trying to find a way to determine right away if the project is a Winforms application. Yes, I can look at the files and determine that by looking at the forms. But I'm wondering if there is a more obvious way to determine that by simply looking at a project's properties.

The other reason I'm asking is because when I look at the project properties of a WPF application, the Output Type is also Windows Application. The way to determine that it's a WPF app is by looking for XAML files. So is there a simpler technique to determine what type of app it is by looking at project properties?

Answer 1

You can tell by what assemblies the project references. Does it reference assemblies beneath System.Windows.Forms? If so, it's WinForms. If it only references namespaces beneath System.Windows other than System.Windows.Forms, then it's WPF.

Check the type of your main form -- is it a System.Windows.Forms.Form? If so, it's a WinForms project. If it's a System.Windows.Window, then it's WPF.