PowerShell script to open a recently used solution in Visual Studio

Open-MruSolution.ps1

function Open-MruSolution($sln) {
    $mruItems = "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\MRUItems"
    $guids = Get-ChildItem $mruitems |
        Select-Object -ExpandProperty name |
        Foreach-Object { $_.Substring($_.LastIndexOf('\') + 1) }

    [array]$mostRecentlyUsedSlns = $guids |
        Foreach-Object {
            $guid = $_
            Get-ChildItem "$mruItems\$guid" |
                Select-Object -ExpandProperty Property |
                Foreach-Object {
                    $value = Get-ItemPropertyValue "$mruItems\$guid\Items" -Name $_
                    if ($value.Contains('.sln')) {
                        $value.Substring(0, $value.IndexOf('|'))
                    }
                }
        }

    if ([string]::IsNullOrWhitespace($sln)) {
        Write-Host "Recently Used Solutions:`n"
        for ($i = 0; $i -lt $mostRecentlyUsedSlns.Count; $i++) {
            Write-Host "$($i + 1): $($mostRecentlyUsedSlns[$i])"
        }
        $toOpen = Read-Host "`nChoose # to open"
        if ($toOpen -gt 0 -and $toOpen -le $mostRecentlyUsedSlns.Count) {
            Write-Host "Starting $($mostRecentlyUsedSlns[$toOpen - 1])..."
            & $mostRecentlyUsedSlns[$toOpen - 1]
        }
    }
    else {
        foreach ($mru in $mostRecentlyUsedSlns) {
            if ($mru -like "*$sln*") {
                Write-Host "Starting $mru..."
                & $mru
                break
            }
        }
    }
}
Set-Alias o Open-MruSolution

This is a simple script to look in the registry to open a recently used Visual Studio solution by partial name. It is currently hard-coded to VS2013 (see 12.0 reference in $MRUPath).

To use it, just drop it in your $profile and use like o log assuming you have a solution with "log" in the name.

If you don't pass in a $sln argument, it will display all of the recently used solutions and you can then choose which one you wish to open, as seen below:

» o
Recently Used Solutions:

1: C:\dev\foo\foo.sln
2: C:\dev\other\log.sln
3: C:\dev\web\web.sln

Choose # to open:

Updated function for Visual Studio 2015.

Fixed a one-off error.

Fixed a bug where $mostRecentlyUsedSlns wasn't an array when there was only one item returned from the pipeline.

Update to use PowerShell v5 registry function Get-ItemPropertyValue.