Many times I have seen Visual Studio solutions which have multiple projects that share source files. These common source files are usually out in a common directory and in the solution explorer their icon shows up with a link arrow in the bottom left.
However, any time I try to add a source file to the project that is outside of that project's main directory, it just automatically copies it into the directory so that I no longer have a shared copy.
I found that I can get around this by manually opening the project file in a text editor and modifying the path to something like "../../../Common/Source.cs" but this is more of a hack then I would like.
Is there a setting or something I can change that will allow me to do this from within the IDE?
Right click on a project, select Add->Existing Item->Add as link (press on small arrow on Add button)
Thanks @aku!
I knew this could be done, but I didn't know how to do this from Visual Studio. It shows up as a shortcut to the file and the csproj file generates the resulting XML like this:
<Compile Include="..\CommonAssemblyInfo.cs">
<Link>CommonAssemblyInfo.cs</Link>
</Compile>
I've seen this technique commonly used for common AssemblyInfo files to keep a consistent version.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45650/common-files-in-visual-studio-solution