What is the AppDesignerFolder used for in a csproj file?

Question

I'm perplexed as to what the AppDesignerFolder element is used for in a csproj file.

There appears to be almost no documentation at MSDN, and the most insightful answer I've found is just not very satisfactory.

So my question is, just what exactly does this attribute control...?

Answer 1

The AppDesignerFolder element specifies which folder under the project is the "Properties" folder. This is a normal folder under the project directory, but it's displayed specially in Solution Explorer.

• This folder appears as the first node under the project, before "References" and the normal folders.
• It has a special icon, different from the normal "folder" icon.
• If you double-click this folder in Solution Explorer, the IDE displays the Project Properties page (rather than expanding the folder as would normally happen on double-click).
• The right-click menu is different (has fewer menu items than a normal folder's right-click menu).

The IDE always sets this element to "Properties", which corresponds to the Properties folder it creates for every new project (the folder containing AssemblyInfo.cs). You can change it by editing the .csproj file manually, if you want your "Properties" folder to have some different name. The only reason I've ever seen anyone change it is when there were multiple .csproj files in a single directory (so it didn't make sense for them all to share the same "Properties" folder), but that was a very oddball scenario.

As far as I know, this only affects the way the folder displays in Solution Explorer. It doesn't affect the build process at all.