Project Types

In Visual Studio, projects are the containers that developers use to organize source code files and other resources that appear in Solution Explorer. Typically, projects are files, for example, a .csproj file for a Visual C# project, that store references to source code files and resources like bitmap files. Projects let you organize, build, debug, and deploy source code, references to Web services and databases, and other resources. VSPackages can extend the Visual Studio project system in three main ways: project types, project subtypes, and custom tools.

Visual Studio includes several project types for languages such as Visual C#, Visual Basic, and Visual J#, and the IronPython integration sample includes a project type for the IronPython language. Visual Studio also lets you create your own project types.

Visual Studio comes with many project templates to create the necessary code and files to start developing applications. Details on few common project types are listed as

Project Type	Description
Class library	Component library with no user interface
Console application	Command line application
Database project	SQL script storage
Device application	Windows application for a smart device
Empty project	Blank project
SQL Server project	Management of stored procedures and SQL Server objects
Web service	ASP.NET Web application with no user interface; technically, no longer a project type
Web site	ASP.NET Web application; technically, no longer a project type
Windows	Windows application with a user interface application
Windows service	Windows application with no user interface
WPF Browser Application	Windows Presentation Foundation browser application

Visual Studio has templates pre-defined for most of programmer’s needs but custom project templates can also be developed by user for genearting some default content to use. Customizing involves the following steps