Exclude files and general search

[AntiChrist]

In VS 2005 if you exclude files from a project, it actually renames the
file to filename.exclude. In previous versions, it just left the file
alone but excluded it. If you have a very large ASP.net web site you
may have thousands of images. In our case we have millions because the
nature of the site is that users upload their photo albums to share
with other users. I NEVER want the IDE to enumerate these files for
any reason, including loading them into the solution explorer tree. If
I exclude them, the IDE will enumerate them as it renames them, taking
forever, and breaking the website.

The real problem is that I need to do a global replace for a string
that may be in the .aspx file or in the .aspx.vb file depending on the
page. The website only has about 100 different pages. When I do a
find with the search scope set to 'Current Project' it gets every file
from the web. This is the massage in the status bar.

Getting the file '9897686.jpg' from the web...

IMHO, an exclude should not rename any files and a find or replace
should be able to not try to access inappropriate files.

The question, finally, is are there any workarounds for this behavior?

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

The problem is, the project type you are using is not the same as in VS
2003. You're using the new Web Site project in VS 2005, which uses a
different approach than VS 2003. You need to use a different project type.
There's a new project type for VS 2005 called Web Application projects. They
behave more to what you are used to in VS 2003 and were created due to the
demand for a project type similar to the old model. You can download the Web
Application project seperately over at www.asp.net, or you can download it
as part of the VS 2005 Service Pack 1.