HowTo: Remove unused references and using clauses in Visual Studio

I recently posted a list of the VS2015 extensions I use on my main machine at: https://zoomicon.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/visual-studio-2015-extensions-i-use/

From that list of extensions I use the Productivity Power Tools one, it has a "Power Commands > Remove and Sort Usings" action that one can right click and run on the whole solution. Much easier than opening it for each

There is another nice extension called ResolveUR that is not available for VS2015, but only for VS2013 (think you can edit its .vsix and make it work for it too though, see the process for other similar extension explained at https://devio.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/remove-unused-references-with-visual-studio-2013/). I usually open up the solution in VS2013 too just to run that. Resharper also has such functionality as shown at:

https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/help/Refactorings__Remove_Unused_References.html

Alternative is to use the Copy References extension and right click a reference under the References subtree of a project, then select "Copy Reference", then Remove the reference and rebuild that project. If rebuild fails, then right click at the References again and select Paste Reference. Then repeat till you remove all references that are not needed

In fact one should FIRST remove all unused using clauses and THEN remove unused references. That is because some files like App.xaml.cs, AssemblyInfo.cs may have using clauses that they don’t really use. So unless those using clauses are removed, the compiler thinks respective references to assemblies those namespaces were at are needed

HowTo: Make Project Linker extension’s VSIX install at Visual Studio 2012

Project Linker is a Visual Studio Extension that “helps to automatically create and maintain links from a source project to a target project to share code that is common to Silverlight and WPF”.

In ClipFlair, where I have shared code between a Silverlight and a WPF project (I guess same would be for XNA projects for Xbox360 and for PC), a practice I use is to put shared files in a “Source” project and add them to both projects as links (using “Open as link” action available from Add file dialog if you press the dropdown arrow next to the “Open” button).

An alternative is to put such files in say the WPF project and use the Project Linker tool from Microsoft Patterns & Practices group to link to those files from the Silverlight project easily.

However, that tool seems to be only available for Visual Studio 2010, not for the newer 2012 version. Luckily, some users have posted a workarround at the discussion there (Reviews and Q&A tabs):

1. Download the .vsix
2. Extract contents with 7-Zip (since .vsix is a .zip file which you can see by renaming to .zip or .vsix.zip)
3. Modify file with extension .vsixmanifest to add <visualstudio version="11.0"> to the <supportedproducts> node
4. Change MaxVersion to <supportedframeworkruntimeedition minversion="3.5" maxversion="4.5" /> (this may not be necessary)
5. Zip up contents again
6. Rename extension back to .vsix
7. Install extension

According to comments there, this works but not for all project types. It works if one links the Silverlight project to the WPF one, but not the other way around. It throws a NullReferenceException somewhere in the extension.