What are all these *.FileListAbsolute.txt files for?

Question

What are the *.FileListAbsolute.txt files for that Visual Studio generates? They keep cluttering up my searches. Such as when I search for *.csproj for adding projects to a .sln

Answer 1

Im not sure why it's generated and am researching that now. VS writes to these files each time you compile. You can delete all of them and it will regenerate when you compile. (Use caution if you use svn and don't delete the svnbase files)

Answer 2

The FileListAbsolute.txt files list the DLLs

Answer 3

It tracks files to be deleted upon clean. From Understanding the Clean target:

[T]he common targets implement an honor-system method of tracking the output of "the last build". Well-behaved targets emit their outputs into an item named @(FileWrites), which is serialized to $(CleanFile) in the obj directory (it ends with .FileListAbsolute.txt) in a target named _CleanRecordFileWrites. Clean can then read that list and delete files in it during a subsequent MSBuild invocation.

Answer 4

I know this is an older post...but I had this same issue and it turned out that I had accidently checked these into source control and not checked them back out, leaving them read only. The solution was to remove them from source control.

Answer 5

The FileListAbsolute.txt file contains the list of files built in the current build and in prior builds, and is used during a Clean and Rebuild to figure out which files to delete.

The file is necessary because in certain situations, such as a project that has been renamed, you want the Build system to be able to delete the older name.