Should I add the Visual Studio suo and user files to source control

Question

Visual Studio solutions contain two types of hidden user files  One is the solution  suo file which is a binary file  The other is the project  user file which is a text file  Exactly what data do these files contain   I ve also been wondering whether I should add these files to source control  Subversion in my case   If I don t add these files and another developer checks out the solution  will Visual Studio automatically create new user files

User · Answer

By default Microsoft s Visual SourceSafe does not include these files in the source control because they are user-specific settings files   I would follow that model if you re using SVN as source control

User · Answer

Using Rational ClearCase the answer is no  Only the  sln  amp    proj should be registered in source code control   I can t answer for other vendors  If I recall correctly  these files are  user  specific options  your environment

User · Answer

You don t need to add these -- they contain per-user settings  and other developers won t want your copy

User · Answer

Visual Studio will automatically create them   I don t recommend putting them in source control   There have been numerous times where a local developer s SOU file was causing VS to behave erratically on that developers box   Deleting the file and then letting VS recreate it always fixed the issues

User · Answer

Others have explained why having the   suo and   user files under source control is not a good idea   I d like to suggest that you add these patterns to the svn ignore property for 2 reasons    So other developers won t wind up with one developer s settings  So when you view status  or commit files  those files won t clutter the code base and obscure new files you need to add

User · Answer

We don t commit the binary file    suo   but we commit the  user file  The  user file contains for example the start options for debugging the project  You can find the start options in the properties of the project in the tab  Debug   We used NUnit in some projects and configured the nunit-gui exe as the start option for the project  Without the  user file  each team member would have to configure it separately   Hope this helps

User · Answer

No  you should not add them to source control since - as you said - they re user specific      SUO  Solution User Options   Records   all of the options that you might   associate with your solution so that   each time you open it  it includes   customizations that you   have made     The  user file contains the user options for the project  while SUO is for the solution  and extends the project file name  e g  anything csproj user contains user settings for the anything csproj project

User · Answer

Visual Studio will automatically create them   I don t recommend putting them in source control   There have been numerous times where a local developer s SOU file was causing VS to behave erratically on that developers box   Deleting the file and then letting VS recreate it always fixed the issues

User · Answer

You cannot source-control the  user files  because that s user specific  It contains the name of remote machine and other user-dependent things  It s a vcproj related file   The  suo file is a sln related file and it contains the  solution user options   startup project s   windows position  what s docked and where  what s floating   etc    It s a binary file  and I don t know if it contains something  user related    In our company we do not take those files under source control

User · Answer

You don t need to add these -- they contain per-user settings  and other developers won t want your copy

User · Answer

Visual Studio will automatically create them   I don t recommend putting them in source control   There have been numerous times where a local developer s SOU file was causing VS to behave erratically on that developers box   Deleting the file and then letting VS recreate it always fixed the issues

User · Answer

These files are user-specific options  which should be independent of the solution itself   Visual Studio will create new ones as necessary  so they do not need to be checked in to source control   Indeed  it would probably be better not to as this allows individual developers to customize their environment as they see fit

User · Answer

You don t need to add these -- they contain per-user settings  and other developers won t want your copy

User · Answer

Visual Studio will automatically create them   I don t recommend putting them in source control   There have been numerous times where a local developer s SOU file was causing VS to behave erratically on that developers box   Deleting the file and then letting VS recreate it always fixed the issues

User · Answer

This appears to be Microsoft s opinion on the matter   Adding  and editing   suo files to source control     I don t know why your project stores the DebuggingWorkingDirectory in   the suo file  If that is a user specific setting you should consider   storing that in the   proj user filename  If that setting is shareable   between all users working on the project you should consider storing   it in the project file itself       Don t even think of adding the suo file to source control  The SUO    soluton user options  file is meant to contain user-specific   settings  and should not be shared amongst users working on the same   solution  If you d be adding the suo file in the scc database I don t   know what other things in the IDE you d break  but from source control   point of view you will break web projects scc integration  the Lan vs   Internet plugin used by different users for VSS access  and you could   even cause the scc to break completely  VSS database path stored in   suo file that may be valid for you may not be valid for another user        Alin Constantin  MSFT

User · Answer

Using Rational ClearCase the answer is no  Only the  sln  amp    proj should be registered in source code control   I can t answer for other vendors  If I recall correctly  these files are  user  specific options  your environment

User · Answer

Others have explained that no  you don t want this in version control  You should configure your version control system to ignore the file  e g  via a  gitignore file   To really understand why  it helps to see what s actually in this file  I wrote a command line tool that lets you see the  suo file s contents  Install it on your machine via  dotnet tool install -g suo  It has two sub-commands  keys and view  suo keys  lt path-to-suo-file gt   This will dump out the key for each value in the file  For example  abridged   nuget ProjInfoEx BookmarkState DebuggerWatches HiddenSlnFolders ObjMgrContentsV8 UnloadedProjects ClassViewContents OutliningStateDir ProjExplorerState TaskListShortcuts XmlPackageOptions BackgroundLoadData DebuggerExceptions DebuggerFindSource DebuggerFindSymbol ILSpy-234190A6EE66 MRU Solution Files UnloadedProjectsEx ApplicationInsights DebuggerBreakpoints OutliningStateV1674      As you can see  lots of IDE features use this file to store their state  Use the view command to see a given key s value  For example    suo view nuget --format utf8  suo nuget     quot WindowSettings quot    quot project MyProject quot    quot SourceRepository quot   quot nuget org quot   quot ShowPreviewWindow quot  false  quot ShowDeprecatedFrameworkWindow quot  true  quot RemoveDependencies quot  false  quot ForceRemove quot  false  quot IncludePrerelease quot  false  quot SelectedFilter quot   quot UpdatesAvailable quot   quot DependencyBehavior quot   quot Lowest quot   quot FileConflictAction quot   quot PromptUser quot   quot OptionsExpanded quot  false  quot SortPropertyName quot   quot ProjectName quot   quot SortDirection quot   quot Ascending quot      More information on the tool here  https   github com drewnoakes suo

User · Answer

I wouldn t  Anything that could change per  user  is usually not good in source control   suo   user  obj bin directories

User · Answer

We don t commit the binary file    suo   but we commit the  user file  The  user file contains for example the start options for debugging the project  You can find the start options in the properties of the project in the tab  Debug   We used NUnit in some projects and configured the nunit-gui exe as the start option for the project  Without the  user file  each team member would have to configure it separately   Hope this helps

User · Answer

No      I just wanted a real short answer  and there wasn t any

User · Answer

Others have explained why having the   suo and   user files under source control is not a good idea   I d like to suggest that you add these patterns to the svn ignore property for 2 reasons    So other developers won t wind up with one developer s settings  So when you view status  or commit files  those files won t clutter the code base and obscure new files you need to add

User · Answer

These files contain user preference configurations that are in general specific to your machine  so it s better not to put it in SCM  Also  VS will change it almost every time you execute it  so it will always be marked by the SCM as  changed   I don t include either  I m in a project using VS for 2 years and had no problems doing that  The only minor annoyance is that the debug parameters  execution path  deployment target  etc   are stored in one of those files  don t know which   so if you have a standard for them you won t be able to  publish  it via SCM for other developers to have the entire development environment  ready to use

User · Answer

user is the user settings  and I think  suo is the solution user options   You don t want these files under source control  they will be re-created for each user

User · Answer

They contain the specific settings about the project that are typically assigned to a single developer  like  for example  the starting project and starting page to start when you debug your application    So it s better not adding them to version control  leaving VS recreate them so that each developer can have the specific settings they want

User · Answer

No  you should not add them to source control since - as you said - they re user specific      SUO  Solution User Options   Records   all of the options that you might   associate with your solution so that   each time you open it  it includes   customizations that you   have made     The  user file contains the user options for the project  while SUO is for the solution  and extends the project file name  e g  anything csproj user contains user settings for the anything csproj project

User · Answer

You cannot source-control the  user files  because that s user specific  It contains the name of remote machine and other user-dependent things  It s a vcproj related file   The  suo file is a sln related file and it contains the  solution user options   startup project s   windows position  what s docked and where  what s floating   etc    It s a binary file  and I don t know if it contains something  user related    In our company we do not take those files under source control

User · Answer

I wouldn t  Anything that could change per  user  is usually not good in source control   suo   user  obj bin directories

User · Answer

They contain the specific settings about the project that are typically assigned to a single developer  like  for example  the starting project and starting page to start when you debug your application    So it s better not adding them to version control  leaving VS recreate them so that each developer can have the specific settings they want

User · Answer

You don t need to add these -- they contain per-user settings  and other developers won t want your copy

User · Answer

Others have explained that no  you don t want this in version control  You should configure your version control system to ignore the file  e g  via a  gitignore file   To really understand why  it helps to see what s actually in this file  I wrote a command line tool that lets you see the  suo file s contents  Install it on your machine via  dotnet tool install -g suo  It has two sub-commands  keys and view  suo keys  lt path-to-suo-file gt   This will dump out the key for each value in the file  For example  abridged   nuget ProjInfoEx BookmarkState DebuggerWatches HiddenSlnFolders ObjMgrContentsV8 UnloadedProjects ClassViewContents OutliningStateDir ProjExplorerState TaskListShortcuts XmlPackageOptions BackgroundLoadData DebuggerExceptions DebuggerFindSource DebuggerFindSymbol ILSpy-234190A6EE66 MRU Solution Files UnloadedProjectsEx ApplicationInsights DebuggerBreakpoints OutliningStateV1674      As you can see  lots of IDE features use this file to store their state  Use the view command to see a given key s value  For example    suo view nuget --format utf8  suo nuget     quot WindowSettings quot    quot project MyProject quot    quot SourceRepository quot   quot nuget org quot   quot ShowPreviewWindow quot  false  quot ShowDeprecatedFrameworkWindow quot  true  quot RemoveDependencies quot  false  quot ForceRemove quot  false  quot IncludePrerelease quot  false  quot SelectedFilter quot   quot UpdatesAvailable quot   quot DependencyBehavior quot   quot Lowest quot   quot FileConflictAction quot   quot PromptUser quot   quot OptionsExpanded quot  false  quot SortPropertyName quot   quot ProjectName quot   quot SortDirection quot   quot Ascending quot      More information on the tool here  https   github com drewnoakes suo

User · Answer

We don t commit the binary file    suo   but we commit the  user file  The  user file contains for example the start options for debugging the project  You can find the start options in the properties of the project in the tab  Debug   We used NUnit in some projects and configured the nunit-gui exe as the start option for the project  Without the  user file  each team member would have to configure it separately   Hope this helps

User · Answer

These files are user-specific options  which should be independent of the solution itself   Visual Studio will create new ones as necessary  so they do not need to be checked in to source control   Indeed  it would probably be better not to as this allows individual developers to customize their environment as they see fit

User · Answer

I wouldn t  Anything that could change per  user  is usually not good in source control   suo   user  obj bin directories

User · Answer

They contain the specific settings about the project that are typically assigned to a single developer  like  for example  the starting project and starting page to start when you debug your application    So it s better not adding them to version control  leaving VS recreate them so that each developer can have the specific settings they want

User · Answer

No  you should not add them to source control since - as you said - they re user specific      SUO  Solution User Options   Records   all of the options that you might   associate with your solution so that   each time you open it  it includes   customizations that you   have made     The  user file contains the user options for the project  while SUO is for the solution  and extends the project file name  e g  anything csproj user contains user settings for the anything csproj project

User · Answer

You cannot source-control the  user files  because that s user specific  It contains the name of remote machine and other user-dependent things  It s a vcproj related file   The  suo file is a sln related file and it contains the  solution user options   startup project s   windows position  what s docked and where  what s floating   etc    It s a binary file  and I don t know if it contains something  user related    In our company we do not take those files under source control

User · Answer

This appears to be Microsoft s opinion on the matter   Adding  and editing   suo files to source control     I don t know why your project stores the DebuggingWorkingDirectory in   the suo file  If that is a user specific setting you should consider   storing that in the   proj user filename  If that setting is shareable   between all users working on the project you should consider storing   it in the project file itself       Don t even think of adding the suo file to source control  The SUO    soluton user options  file is meant to contain user-specific   settings  and should not be shared amongst users working on the same   solution  If you d be adding the suo file in the scc database I don t   know what other things in the IDE you d break  but from source control   point of view you will break web projects scc integration  the Lan vs   Internet plugin used by different users for VSS access  and you could   even cause the scc to break completely  VSS database path stored in   suo file that may be valid for you may not be valid for another user        Alin Constantin  MSFT

User · Answer

These files contain user preference configurations that are in general specific to your machine  so it s better not to put it in SCM  Also  VS will change it almost every time you execute it  so it will always be marked by the SCM as  changed   I don t include either  I m in a project using VS for 2 years and had no problems doing that  The only minor annoyance is that the debug parameters  execution path  deployment target  etc   are stored in one of those files  don t know which   so if you have a standard for them you won t be able to  publish  it via SCM for other developers to have the entire development environment  ready to use

User · Answer

These files are user-specific options  which should be independent of the solution itself   Visual Studio will create new ones as necessary  so they do not need to be checked in to source control   Indeed  it would probably be better not to as this allows individual developers to customize their environment as they see fit

User · Answer

Using Rational ClearCase the answer is no  Only the  sln  amp    proj should be registered in source code control   I can t answer for other vendors  If I recall correctly  these files are  user  specific options  your environment

User · Answer

user is the user settings  and I think  suo is the solution user options   You don t want these files under source control  they will be re-created for each user

User · Answer

Others have explained why having the   suo and   user files under source control is not a good idea   I d like to suggest that you add these patterns to the svn ignore property for 2 reasons    So other developers won t wind up with one developer s settings  So when you view status  or commit files  those files won t clutter the code base and obscure new files you need to add

User · Answer

They contain the specific settings about the project that are typically assigned to a single developer  like  for example  the starting project and starting page to start when you debug your application    So it s better not adding them to version control  leaving VS recreate them so that each developer can have the specific settings they want

User · Answer

If you set your executable dir dependencies in ProjectProperties Debugging Environment  the paths are stored in   user  files    Suppose I set this string in above-mentioned field   PATH C  xyz bin  This is how it will get stored in   user  file      lt LocalDebuggerEnvironment gt PATH C  xyz bin  LocalDebuggerEnvironment  lt  LocalDebuggerEnvironment gt   This helped us a lot while working in OpenCV  We could use different versions of OpenCV for different projects  Another advantage is  it was very easy to set up our projects on a new machine  We just had to copy corresponding dependency dirs  So for some projects  I prefer to add the   user  to source control    Even though  it is entirely dependent on projects  You can take a call based on your needs

User · Answer

Others have explained why having the   suo and   user files under source control is not a good idea   I d like to suggest that you add these patterns to the svn ignore property for 2 reasons    So other developers won t wind up with one developer s settings  So when you view status  or commit files  those files won t clutter the code base and obscure new files you need to add

User · Answer

If you set your executable dir dependencies in ProjectProperties Debugging Environment  the paths are stored in   user  files    Suppose I set this string in above-mentioned field   PATH C  xyz bin  This is how it will get stored in   user  file      lt LocalDebuggerEnvironment gt PATH C  xyz bin  LocalDebuggerEnvironment  lt  LocalDebuggerEnvironment gt   This helped us a lot while working in OpenCV  We could use different versions of OpenCV for different projects  Another advantage is  it was very easy to set up our projects on a new machine  We just had to copy corresponding dependency dirs  So for some projects  I prefer to add the   user  to source control    Even though  it is entirely dependent on projects  You can take a call based on your needs

User · Answer

These files contain user preference configurations that are in general specific to your machine  so it s better not to put it in SCM  Also  VS will change it almost every time you execute it  so it will always be marked by the SCM as  changed   I don t include either  I m in a project using VS for 2 years and had no problems doing that  The only minor annoyance is that the debug parameters  execution path  deployment target  etc   are stored in one of those files  don t know which   so if you have a standard for them you won t be able to  publish  it via SCM for other developers to have the entire development environment  ready to use

User · Answer

No  they shouldn t be committed to source control as they are developer machine-specific local settings   GitHub maintain a list of suggested file types for Visual Studio users to ignore at https   github com github gitignore blob master VisualStudio gitignore  For svn  I have the following global-ignore property set        DotSettings User     onetoc2     suo  vs PrecompiledWeb thumbs db obj bin debug     user   42  vshost   42      tss     dbml layout

User · Answer

On the MSDN website  it clearly states that      The solution user options   suo  file contains per-user solution   options  This file should not be checked in to source code control    So I d say it is pretty safe to ignore these files while checking in stuff to your source control

User · Answer

These files contain user preference configurations that are in general specific to your machine  so it s better not to put it in SCM  Also  VS will change it almost every time you execute it  so it will always be marked by the SCM as  changed   I don t include either  I m in a project using VS for 2 years and had no problems doing that  The only minor annoyance is that the debug parameters  execution path  deployment target  etc   are stored in one of those files  don t know which   so if you have a standard for them you won t be able to  publish  it via SCM for other developers to have the entire development environment  ready to use

User · Answer

No  you should not add them to source control since - as you said - they re user specific      SUO  Solution User Options   Records   all of the options that you might   associate with your solution so that   each time you open it  it includes   customizations that you   have made     The  user file contains the user options for the project  while SUO is for the solution  and extends the project file name  e g  anything csproj user contains user settings for the anything csproj project

User · Answer

By default Microsoft s Visual SourceSafe does not include these files in the source control because they are user-specific settings files   I would follow that model if you re using SVN as source control

User · Answer

We don t commit the binary file    suo   but we commit the  user file  The  user file contains for example the start options for debugging the project  You can find the start options in the properties of the project in the tab  Debug   We used NUnit in some projects and configured the nunit-gui exe as the start option for the project  Without the  user file  each team member would have to configure it separately   Hope this helps

User · Answer

On the MSDN website  it clearly states that      The solution user options   suo  file contains per-user solution   options  This file should not be checked in to source code control    So I d say it is pretty safe to ignore these files while checking in stuff to your source control

User · Answer

By default Microsoft s Visual SourceSafe does not include these files in the source control because they are user-specific settings files   I would follow that model if you re using SVN as source control

User · Answer

user is the user settings  and I think  suo is the solution user options   You don t want these files under source control  they will be re-created for each user

User · Answer

You cannot source-control the  user files  because that s user specific  It contains the name of remote machine and other user-dependent things  It s a vcproj related file   The  suo file is a sln related file and it contains the  solution user options   startup project s   windows position  what s docked and where  what s floating   etc    It s a binary file  and I don t know if it contains something  user related    In our company we do not take those files under source control

User · Answer

These files are user-specific options  which should be independent of the solution itself   Visual Studio will create new ones as necessary  so they do not need to be checked in to source control   Indeed  it would probably be better not to as this allows individual developers to customize their environment as they see fit

User · Answer

This appears to be Microsoft s opinion on the matter   Adding  and editing   suo files to source control     I don t know why your project stores the DebuggingWorkingDirectory in   the suo file  If that is a user specific setting you should consider   storing that in the   proj user filename  If that setting is shareable   between all users working on the project you should consider storing   it in the project file itself       Don t even think of adding the suo file to source control  The SUO    soluton user options  file is meant to contain user-specific   settings  and should not be shared amongst users working on the same   solution  If you d be adding the suo file in the scc database I don t   know what other things in the IDE you d break  but from source control   point of view you will break web projects scc integration  the Lan vs   Internet plugin used by different users for VSS access  and you could   even cause the scc to break completely  VSS database path stored in   suo file that may be valid for you may not be valid for another user        Alin Constantin  MSFT

User · Answer

No      I just wanted a real short answer  and there wasn t any

User · Answer

By default Microsoft s Visual SourceSafe does not include these files in the source control because they are user-specific settings files   I would follow that model if you re using SVN as source control

User · Answer

No  they shouldn t be committed to source control as they are developer machine-specific local settings   GitHub maintain a list of suggested file types for Visual Studio users to ignore at https   github com github gitignore blob master VisualStudio gitignore  For svn  I have the following global-ignore property set        DotSettings User     onetoc2     suo  vs PrecompiledWeb thumbs db obj bin debug     user   42  vshost   42      tss     dbml layout

User · Answer

Since I found this question answer through Google in 2011  I thought I d take a second and add the link for the   SDF files created by Visual Studio 2010 to the list of files that probably should not be added to version control  the IDE will re-create them   Since I wasn t sure that a   sdf file may have a legitimate use elsewhere  I only ignored the specific  projectname  sdf file from SVN   Why does the Visual Studio conversion wizard 2010 create a massive SDF database file

User · Answer

I wouldn t  Anything that could change per  user  is usually not good in source control   suo   user  obj bin directories

User · Answer

Don t add any of those files into version control  These files are auto generated with work station specific information  if checked-in to version control that will cause trouble in other work stations

User · Answer

This appears to be Microsoft s opinion on the matter   Adding  and editing   suo files to source control     I don t know why your project stores the DebuggingWorkingDirectory in   the suo file  If that is a user specific setting you should consider   storing that in the   proj user filename  If that setting is shareable   between all users working on the project you should consider storing   it in the project file itself       Don t even think of adding the suo file to source control  The SUO    soluton user options  file is meant to contain user-specific   settings  and should not be shared amongst users working on the same   solution  If you d be adding the suo file in the scc database I don t   know what other things in the IDE you d break  but from source control   point of view you will break web projects scc integration  the Lan vs   Internet plugin used by different users for VSS access  and you could   even cause the scc to break completely  VSS database path stored in   suo file that may be valid for you may not be valid for another user        Alin Constantin  MSFT

User · Answer

As explained in other answers  both  suo and  user shouldn t be added to source control  since they are user machine-specific  BTW  suo for newest versions of VS was moved into dedicated temporary directory  vs  which should be kept out of source control completely    However if your application requires some setup of environment for debugging in VS  such settings are usually kept in  user file   it may be handy to prepare a sample file  naming it like  user SAMPLE  and add it to source control for references   Instead of hard-coded absolute path in such file  it makes sense to use relative ones or rely on environment variables  so the sample may be generic enough to be easily re-usable by others

User · Answer

Since I found this question answer through Google in 2011  I thought I d take a second and add the link for the   SDF files created by Visual Studio 2010 to the list of files that probably should not be added to version control  the IDE will re-create them   Since I wasn t sure that a   sdf file may have a legitimate use elsewhere  I only ignored the specific  projectname  sdf file from SVN   Why does the Visual Studio conversion wizard 2010 create a massive SDF database file

User · Answer

user is the user settings  and I think  suo is the solution user options   You don t want these files under source control  they will be re-created for each user

User · Answer

Don t add any of those files into version control  These files are auto generated with work station specific information  if checked-in to version control that will cause trouble in other work stations

User · Answer

As explained in other answers  both  suo and  user shouldn t be added to source control  since they are user machine-specific  BTW  suo for newest versions of VS was moved into dedicated temporary directory  vs  which should be kept out of source control completely    However if your application requires some setup of environment for debugging in VS  such settings are usually kept in  user file   it may be handy to prepare a sample file  naming it like  user SAMPLE  and add it to source control for references   Instead of hard-coded absolute path in such file  it makes sense to use relative ones or rely on environment variables  so the sample may be generic enough to be easily re-usable by others

User · Answer

Using Rational ClearCase the answer is no  Only the  sln  amp    proj should be registered in source code control   I can t answer for other vendors  If I recall correctly  these files are  user  specific options  your environment

[visual-studio] Should I add the Visual Studio .suo and .user files to source control?

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