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We are working a couple of people on the same project using Visual Studio 2015 and git. This works reasonably well, expect for the .csproj file (the project file). Everytime you add a new file to the project, the .csproj file changes automatically. Hence if two (or more) people adds a file to their local version, it will require a merge from the last one who commits.

Is there a way to avoid this?

Edit: I can fetch, but not pull or commit. If I try to pull, Visual Studio Git wants to merge the remote .csproj file with my local version. It cannot do this automatically however, and every attempt I have made to assist it results in a non-functional .csproj file.

Jakob Busk Sørensen
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3 Answers3

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The .csproj files Visual Studio creates are XML data. Git does not know anything about XML; it tries to merge these as ordinary text files. The result is rarely valid XML, and even more rarely anything resembling functional.

By default, when Git fails to merge these XML files, you will typically get a merge conflict: Git will stop and make you fix up the mess. It's up to you to get this right. Whether VS provides any tools to help, I have no idea (I avoid Windows). See also this description of the problem (this link is in the linked question's answer as well, but I figure I should include it as a direct link here).

Some people try to use union merge to fully automate the merging of these XML files, so that there is no Git conflict. This is not a good idea. See VS 2013 C# and Git: .csproj files don't merge upon pulling for details.

Community
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torek
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For anyone reading this question here 5+ years later: If you still struggle with this, you probably need to upgrade to .NET 6 (or higher). The .csproj file is a lot slimmer now, causing a lot less merge conflicts.

Jakob Busk Sørensen
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No need. Have You tried such flow? Were there many conflicts? Merge conflict in Git doesn't happen when couple people modify one file but when couple of people modify the same line. To be honest Git doesn't store files, but content. Files are just common way for human to deal with content.

So my answer is to try and see if there is any problem as Git auto resolver is quite clever and there is possibility that Your problem will be nonexistent.

Hauleth
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  • So basically, instead of me making a Pull before each commit, I just commit and let git merge the `.csproj` file? – Jakob Busk Sørensen Mar 22 '17 at 13:18
  • No. You cannot push without fetching remote changes. I am not .NET developer but I think that there shouldn't be much problems with `.csproj`. Do you encounter them often? If yes then there probably are different issues. – Hauleth Mar 22 '17 at 13:21
  • Everytime a commit with changes to `.csproj` has been made, I cannot make a fetch/pull (as this would overwrite my own modified `.csproj` file. Particularly early in the development, there is a lot of adding and renaming of files, which makes this occur somewhat often... – Jakob Busk Sørensen Mar 22 '17 at 13:25