Reference defining all Visual Studio 2012 Solution Explorer Icons

Question

I have been unable to find a reference to the new Visual Studio 2012 Solution Explorer icons. From time to time, some of our .sql files icons change as with the one with the yellow triangle below. Does such a reference exist? If not, what does this yellow triangle icon mean?

Answer 1

I don't have a reference for all the icons. However, I believe the yellow triangle indicates that there are warnings associated with referenced assembly.

View the warnings by going to Error List (usually in the at the bottom of Visual Studio or in the menu VIEW - Error List or by Ctrl + W, E).

Then click on the Warnings tab. There should be one or more warnings about the assembly. Usually there are missing or conflicting references or something like "the primary reference X could not be resolved because it has an indirect dependency on Y which has a different version of the framework.

This could happen if you reference an assembly that is built for a new version of the .NET framework. (Example your assembly is using .NET 4.0 but the assembly you want to use is built with .NET 4.5).

Answer 2

The icon indicates a document warning.

Follow this link Visual Studio image library. The download contains a document listing of the icon and what it means.

Answer 3

As Chris Weber says, the problem may arise if you add a new project to your solution, and the new project targets a higher version of the .NET framework than the other projects in the same solution.

Fix: Right click your newly added project, go to properties. On the left handside, find the topmost tab called "Application". In the right frame, you should see a dropdown where you can set "Target Framework". Make sure this is the same version as the rest of your solution.