Browsing the .NET Framework source code from Visual Studio

Question

I know that I can set up Visual Studio to debug through the .NET framework source code.

But is there a way that I can browse the code while NOT debugging - i.e., bei

Answer 1

I downloaded the .NET Framework source code from here http://referencesource.microsoft.com/netframework.aspx.

Since I am working with .NET 4.0, I chose ".Net/4" from the list. (What is ".NET/8.0" in that list? No idea.)

I wrote some scripts to rearrange the bloody mess they give us:

• Into a reasonable hierarchy of directories;
• To remove duplicated code (why is every file doubled, or was my install bad?);
• Rename all top-level namespaces to not conflict with native ones baked into Intellisense.
• Example: System.Windows.Controls -> xSystem.Windows.Controls

Then follow these steps:

1. Create a new Visual Studio project of type "Class Library"
2. Remove all references -- yes, even the system ones.
3. Drag/drop all of your massaged .NET code into the root of your project.
4. Wait about 30 minutes for VS processing. VS will appear to freeze; be patient.

Intellisense/ReSharper still complains about heaps of problems, but now I can right click and select "Go to Declaration/Implementation".

Visual Studio is about 600MB with this project loaded.