I'm working on a project in C# .NET (Visual Studio 2010) with a number of generated partial classes, metadata classes, etc. (if you know Entity Framework, you know what I mean)
My question pertains to the practice of correlating namespaces with directories, whereby each directory denotes a sub-namespace.
Now, I'd like to move the metadata classes into a sub-directory, purely for organizational purposes. Since partial classes must exist within the same namespace, the Metadata sub-directory can no longer denote a namespace (otherwise it'd break the partial classes) I'd be departing from the aforementioned practice; not a big deal, but I like sticking to a standard.
Is there a convention to denote that a given directory is purely organizational?
Off-hand, prefixing the directory name with "." (dot) or "_" (underscore) seems appropriate, the former more than the latter since it would result in an invalid namespace name.
@Pheonixblade9, something like this:
:
|
+- ProjectFolder/
| +- App.config
| +- Packages.config
| +- ClassA.cs
| +- ClassB.cs
| +- ClassC.cs
| +- ClassD.cs
| +- Metadata/
| | +- ClassA.Metadata.cs \
| | +- ClassB.Metadata.cs \ These are the partial classes that shouldn't
| | +- ClassC.Metadata.cs / be namespaced differently than their respective
| | +- ClassD.Metadata.cs / partials in the parent folder
: :
Despite @JohanLarsson providing the correct answer for 2012+, I've opted for the . prefix on the directory:
:
+- ClassC.cs
+- ClassD.cs
+- .Metadata/
| +- ClassA.Metadata.cs
| +- ClassB.Metadata.cs
: :
This renders the namespace name provided to classes created in that folder invalid. It's more of an implicit indicator than an explicit rule as I'd have preferred (and as @JohanLarsson's answer provides) but then again, I'm the sucker running 2010.
I'm still open to answers, and will gladly change acceptance to something better.