Unloading different sets of projects in Visual Studio

Question

Is there an extension to Visual Studio that provides the ability to create something like an 'unloaded project profile' for a solution?

I have a solution with a large number of projects (~100). When working on a certain part, I can unload unrelated projects to improve performance. I'd like to be able to save this group of unloaded projects, so that when I switch to working on a different part I can then cause it's projects to be loaded instead.

Answer 1

I ended up writing my own extension to do this - Loaded Projects, for Visual Studio 2012.

But then I discovered Funnel (by Dimitri Dering), which takes the same concept to the next level, with a more polished UI and additional features.

Answer 2

Visual Studio 2019 has a new concept called "Solution Filter Files".

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/filtered-solutions?view=vs-2019

You can right click on a solution after you've unloaded what you want and do "Save as solution filter". It creates a file which is a list of projects to INCLUDE in opening. So if a new project is added, I don't think it would be picked up.

Another important feature to note is the right click "Show unloaded projects" and the right click "Hide unloaded projects".

FYI - The file looks like this:

{
  "solution": {
    "path": "IvaraDotNet.sln",
    "projects": [
      "AssetManagement\\StaticLoad\\AssetManagementStaticLoad.vcxproj",
       ....
      "framework\\oqpersman\\oqpersman.vcxproj"
    ]
  }
}