I writing and open-source winforms app, and my program depends on another open-source project called ObjectListView.
ObjectListView is its own project in my solution and referenced as such, but its output is set as a .DLL.. It's just an enhanced ListView control. Is there any way that the project ObjectListView can be embedded in my own assembly without having to ILMerge or use some form of packer? (Defeating the purpose of an open-source project)
My initial thought was just to manually drop all the source files and whatnot into my own project, but that seems rather clunky and far from an idea solution.
PS; I did try searching for this but I didn't come across much that wasn't related to embedding DLLs into an output assembly.. Not merging projects like this. I apologize in advance if this question has been answered before.
If you don't want a separate DLL, and you don't want an embedded DLL, then perhaps a "Shared Project" project type is what you're looking for. The docs state:
A Shared Project does not get compiled on its own, it exists purely as a grouping of source code files that can be included in other projects. When referenced by another project, the code is effectively compiled as part of that project. Shared Projects cannot reference any other project type (including other Shared Projects).
While I don't think your project is exactly what it's intended for, I think it will work in your scenario.
See What is the difference between a Shared Project and a Class Library in Visual Studio 2015? for more information.
Related
I have an issue including a self-built library to a C#-project. I have created an own class library called ClassLibrary1 just to learn how to add libraries on Visual Studio 2019.
So I have written some simple code in a newly created .NET-class library project and have clicked on "create new solution" (directly translated from my german IDE-language. Maybe it's called slightly different) after writing the code. Back in the C#-project, I have selected the dll-file from bin/Debug/ of the class library's project folder.
After I have set the checkmark, the dll-file was shown in the solution-explorer under Assemblys like expected. But the issue I now have is that I still cannot use the ClassLibrary1.dll-file in the cs-file in this very project as I expected via the command "using ClassLibrary1;". It only shows me the error message "type- or namespacename "ClassLibrary1" not found" when trying to compile the C#-project and I don't get, why this is the case.
It seems like it has to be a very obvious problem but after some research on the internet and trying some things by myself still nothing has changed.
Thanks in advance for helpful replies.
The by far easiest way to manage a library is to use project references. Ensure that your library and the project that uses the library is in the same solution. Then right click the "references" and select "add Reference", go to the project tab and add a checkbox for the library. Read more about managing references.
You might also need to add namespaces for the classes you wish to use in the source files.
I would not recommend managing using file-references to lose dll-files, since it can easily become a hassle to manage. I.e. if you create a new version of the library you would need to build, and explicitly replace this file in all other projects and update all the references.
If you want to share libraries between multiple solutions the more popular solution would be to setup a nuget server. This solves some of the updating problems by maintaining multiple versions of the same library, and provides a nice interface to update references in all projects. But this is a somewhat more complicated solution, so I would not recommend this for new developers.
Even though Shared Projects have been around since Visual Studio 2015 (maybe as early as VS 2013 update2), I've only recently learned about them. Today I spent time trying to learn how to use them following a tutorial I found Shared Project: An Impressive Feature of Visual Studio 2015 Preview. However, the one thing the author did in that tutorial, which won't work for us, is he created the Shared Project and 3 other projects, all within the same solution. Of course, you can do that, but in practice we're likely to want to create a Shared Project in some solution, and then as time goes by, include that Shared Project in other solutions.
So what I did is instead of putting the Windows Forms application into the same solution as the author of that C# Corner post did, I created a new solution with a Windows Forms project in it, then I tried to add the Shared Project from the first solution. First, I tried adding the .sln file. That failed miserably. Then I tried adding the .shproj file to the second solution. That failed miserably as well.
Next I shared here on SO for ways of addressing this. I found 2 posts: Adding references in a shared (.shproj) project and How do I add a reference to a Shared Code project (.shproj) from another project. The second one gave me an idea. I decided I would simply add the Shared Project, from the first solution, to the second solution by clicking on the second solution within Solution Explorer, then doing a "Add Existing Project". That worked.
But I wonder, is that the way you're supposed to use Shared Projects? If so, it seems to me as though I could just as well created a simple class library in the first solution and then added that class library project to the second solution. Is there something about Shared Projects that make them inherently better to use, if you add the Shared Project to a different solution, instead of just adding a regular class library project to a solution?
A class library compiles into its own DLL and your original project references that DLL, whereas a project using a Shared Project will compile into a single assembly. One scenario I could think of with shared projects is that you can have single code base but has platform specific code sections marked by directives.
There is a good video on this subject even though it's being explained in the context of xamarin they do a good job i think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ov0gLZWgQ
Personally I I would always go with PCL (portable class lib) rather than SAP (shared project). I use shared code projects as documentation container in my projects. The project green icon stands out really well. I keep everything there from markeddown doc files to stored procedures and etc.
I currently have a library which was created in a silverlight application for its use. But Now we are switching over to WPF. So i don't know how would i convert the library to a wpf library. Would i just have to copy all the file in a new project(wpf class library)
As you can see when i reference this silver light library in my wpf project. It gives me a warning.
As the message says, you can't use a project compiled to target Silverlight as a reference for a project targeting some other .NET framework family. You will need to compile a separate assembly compatible with the .NET framework family you're using (i.e. a desktop version). This will require the creation of a whole new project (I'm not aware of a practical way to have a single project target both Silverlight and desktop .NET).
Note that the new project can use the same source files as the original Silverlight one. After creating the project (which you should create as an "Empty Project"), you can add the source files from the Silverlight project, by using the "Add Existing..."/"As Link" option for adding items to the project. Adding the source code as links will cause the new project to reference the original .cs files in their current location rather than creating a new copy of them for the new project.
Note also that your Silverlight code may or may not be 100% compatible with the WPF API. You may have to introduce conditional compilation (i.e. use #if, and declare appropriate conditional compilation symbols, in the projects' settings "Build" tab) so that you can provide correct code for each platform in each .cs file.
Related topics (there a lot of duplicate questions involving adding existing items as links…though many of these involve multiple solutions, not just adding items to a new project):
Share c# class source code between several projects
How do I keep common code shared between projects in c#?
Adding Existing Files To Different Visual Studio 2010 Project
Is it possible to statically share code between projects in C#?
Updating classes used in multiple projects?
Make reference to C# code from multiple projects
Share .cs file among VS 2010 C# projects
How to include source files of one project in another project?
In my solution we have projects both in c#, that controls some GUI and networking work, and c++, that manages some hardware interactions. In my c# project I have the proper PInvokes and am able to use the c++ output dll with no issue but in order to do it, I have to manually copy the output dll to the build directory or create a build script that manages the copy.
My issue with this method is that the solution, in reality, has many many projects, something like 150 at the moment, covering c++, c, c#, and vb.net. We create and delete projects all the time and managing the copy scripts is becoming a major pain. Especially since not all of the projects rely on each other and we have like 20 different build configurations.
Is it possible to simply have the c# project reference the c++ project and automatically copy the project output the same way it does with other managed projects without using post build scripts?
Well, the way I do it and have always done it is by obviously using Visual Studio, and assuming this C++ projects are VS projects you can easily create a VS Solution containing multiple projects that you can organize with "Solution Folders". The organization of your projects inside the solution is really up to how you want to organize it. It resembles a file system with nested folders. Needless to say that you can host projects in different languages such as C++, C#, VB...I'm not too sure if you can include a C project or not, that's out of my expertise.
See a screenshot below of a solution I created to demonstrate this...
Notice that "Business" has a nested solution folder (Utils) which contains a C++ project (ERM.CPPLibraries) and a VB project (ERM.VBLibraries). Then if you reference projects within the solution (Right click -> Add Reference), you will not need to copy the output assemblies everytime you compile your solution (or project(s)) VS is smart enough to resolve all dependencies, resolve them and update them.
Hope it gives you an idea
Edit based on comment
In simple words...No, it's not possible to reference a unmanaged project from a managed project in a VS solution. You can reference DLLs but not projects itself
There is a Github project for a C# library that I'd like to use. Is it more conventional to include the source as a separate project in my Visual Studio solution and build the dll as part of the regular compilation process, or to build a dll separately and include just that in my project reference?
Unless you need to modify the source, use a DLL. Don't forget to mention the license and the source repository location (home of the Github project)
Both the options are equally valid and depends upon how often you require the change the source code.
If you really need to change the source code then you should add the
source code to your project otherwise just adding the reference of the dll will save your
compilation time.
I have seen both approaches.
Mostly I've included 3rd party code into the solution if I intended to modify it a little, or at least I assumed I would.
All other cases, Dll works fine.