Find the References Easily – Code Reference Indicator in Visual Studio 2013 Preview

As a developer one of the common task that we perform during the development is finding the code references using “Find All References” features. This is very much known to us and we all  know why we used it. In Visual Studio 2013, the same things can be achieved in much easier and visualize way. You can see the number of reference as and when you are referring a class, properties, member variable or a method.  You can call this feature as  “Code Reference Indicator” which is part of “Code Information Indicator’ feature of Visual Studio 2013 Preview.

As shown in the image below,  the references are show in the just top of referenced members. 

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Fig: Reference count of student class and and its properties.

You can just click on the indicator to see the referenced places of the members.

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Fig: Code from where Student class is referred.

From the referenced popup windows, you can directly click on the referred code block to navigate. Also a mouse over on the referred item can give view quick code block as tooltip as show in the following image.

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Fig: A Quick Tool Tip indicating the file name, line number and small code block.

Note: This code reference indicator is just an indicator, it will not count as your LOC.  You can see the easily line gap between the code line in the following image.

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Fig: Code Reference Indicator, does not counts as line.

Code Reference Indicator is a part of Code Information Indicator. The are few additional uses of of “Code Information Indicator” which we will be discussing in up coming tips.

Abhijit Jana

Abhijit runs the Daily .NET Tips. He started this site with a vision to have a single knowledge base of .NET tips and tricks and share post that can quickly help any developers . He is a Former Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, CodeProject MVP, Mentor, Speaker, Author, Technology Evangelist and presently working as a .NET Consultant. He blogs at http://abhijitjana.net , you can follow him @AbhijitJana . He is the author of book Kinect for Windows SDK Programming Guide.