What ASP.NET MVC project files should be kept in a repository?

Question

background:Me and my coworkers are working on asp.net mvc project ... we have a computer that works as a server which is where the project will be stored on... each of us has a copy of the project and we got tortoise cvs set up.

questions: when you want to commit something, what files exactly do you commit?.. asp.net reports many dll files, csproj files, cs and sln files that appear to be different from the server's.

Maybe my question is not the right one I should ask so I would appreciate some insight on whats the best approach for working in groups.

Answer 1

The basic csproj file should be committed whenever you add or remove things from the project, to ensure that the project has all the correct files. The solution (sln) is a good one to commit, for the same reason, although I've also seen it done without. You'd also want to commit any cs files, naturally, as they're the main focus of things.

DLL files should only be committed if they're outside references--internal dlls to your project can be ignored, as they'll be built by each computer in turn. You also want to avoid .user files as unnecessary. Ignore the 'bin' and 'obj' folders for each directory, when it comes to commits as well.

Answer 2

You really shouldn't check in anything that the project can generate itself. So no need to check in your bin or obj folders or anything like that, you also want to ignore any user preferences files.

This includes dlls, unless they are third party dlls, then you want to check them in to ensure everyone is working against the same version and this way you don't have to keep changing reference paths.