Empty Visual Studio Project?

Is there a way to have an empty Project in Visual Studio 2008 or 2010? I do not mean an empty solution, I mean an empty project in a solution. Basically I have a solution with multiple projects, and I want to add a project to track some static files that are part of the solution but not of any specific project. Adding them as solution files doesn't work because solution folders are not mapped to file system folders and I want to manage hierarchy from Visual Studio.

At the moment I create an empty Visual C# project which works, but I just wonder if there is a "more empty" project.

I was misled by the C++ "Empty Project" or "Makefile Project". I cant create new folder there.

Here are three steps to add an empty C# project:

1) Create the project. (Add > New Project > Visual C# > Windows > Empty Project)

2) Exclude it from build. (Build > Configuration Manager, uncheck Build on both Debug and Release configuration)

3) Replace its csproj content with the following 3 liners:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
</Project>

There you go. You can create a folder in this project, yet it does not build.

The Visual C++ project types has an "Empty Project" in the "General" category.

It comes up with several empty folders ("Header Files", "Resource Files", "Source Files") that are just 'filters' (they aren't on the file system). You can just remove them.

It also has all the properties of a C++ project available, so don't put C/C++ files in there unless you want them built (or you exclude them from the build).

Other than that, it's pretty empty.

Probably even closer to an "empty project" is a "Makefile Project" which is also located in the "General" category of the Visual C++ project templates. It also creates the 3 filter folders, along with a readme.txt file that you can delete. It has the advantage that unless you specifically give it commands to run during the build, it won't do a damn thing.

For Visual Studio 2015 up this can now be done with so-called Shared Projects. This is simply an empty project type that holds source files for use within another project, see here.

I found an "Empty Project" under the "Windows" category in both C# and Visual Basic, in Visual Studio 2012. I'm unsure if these are present with Visual Studio 2008 or 2010.

It seems to only create an App.Config file, which can easily be deleted.

I think the C++ empty project does support folders. At least in VS 2013 you just have to click on "Show all files" in the Solution Explorer. Then it will not show these virtual folders (filters) anymore, but real folders in the file system and then you can also create new folders, ...