How can you open two different historic versions of same solution in two separate instances of Visual Studio?

Question

How can you open two different historic versions of same solution in two separate instances of Visual Studio? (VS2012)

What I need to do is look at the whole solution for a point in time so I can use "find all references", which you cant do when viewing a single file from a changeset.

If you get the whole codebase for the changeset you require then you overwrite the current code base (as both code bases sit on same location on your local file system) and lose ability to cross reference you current code with the historic version.

Is there a way I can view both current and historic versions of code in Visual Studio (same or different instances) and still be able to use find all references in both versions of the code?

Answer 1

You will need to

1. Pull the first version using the "Get Specific Version" right click option within Source Control Explorer

2. Copy the files from your local path to a different path
3. Pull the second version
4. Open two instances of VS each pointed to the appropriate folders

Its not pretty but it works.