Working with different versions/branches of the same Visual Studio 2005 solution

Question

This is kind of a usability question for using VS2005: I have different branches of the same Visual Studio 2005 solution checked out from version control. The solution and project files are also under version control. On my development workstation, I sometimes have multiple instances of Visual Studio opened on a different version or branch each. They all show up under the same name in the window title and the taskbar, which makes it hard to switch to the correct one etc. (The same goes for the list of recently opened projects in the startup page, but I rarely use that, anyway.)

I tried to find a way to only change the name displayed while not running into too much trouble with source control, but Visual Studio 2005 seems to take the solution name from the name of the SLN file itself, not from some attribute inside of it.

It would already help to have Visual Studio show the full path to the solution file in the title bar, but I haven't found a way to do that, either.

How do you handle different versions from the same solution?

Answer 1

Use the (free) VSCommands plugin:

http://geekswithblogs.net/deadlydog/archive/2011/04/29/friendly-visual-studio-solution-names-for-branches.aspx

I guess it only works when using different folders for different branches (not SVN switching), but still, it's good stuff.