Does the order of items in a csproj file matter?

Question

I would like to programatically manage the VS2008 csproj files in our solution across the team. We get occasional merge issues (in Hg) simply because two developers add different new files in a project, but they end up in the "same place" in the csproj file and trigger the need to "resolve the conflict". Sometimes, one tag gets lost and triggers build errors.

• Can I merge <ItemGroup>s that seem to just list or tags?
• Can I reorder <Content> or <Compile> tags? or, are they in some "smart" order?
• If this is okay in a VS2008 project, will I be able to carry this through to VS2010/2012, or does anything change relevant to this want?

Answer 1

Yes, you can just merge it. The order makes no difference. Will carry through to 2010/2012.