I am developing a set of command line utilities that are very small using C#. For example, I have one application that just prints a line from a config file specified in the PATH variable.
Currently I have one project called utilities under my solution. I was wondering is there was a way to produce multiple exe files from one project. I am looking to do this because there will be about 10 different utilities and I since I already have 6 projects under my solution, I don't want to clutter it any further.
I would expect to be able to have one main function for each executable to be compiled and specify those in different namespaces.
Thanks for your help!
Maybe you just want to add a solution folder, and put all the utility projects into it?
you can share the common code in a class library so you do not have to write it multiple times. Then for each small command line application (executable) you want to create you add a windows console application to the solution.
this is the viable way in my opinion, not aware if you can configure Visual Studio to create many executables from the same sources. Could be you could get it playing around with solution and project configuration but it sounds hacky to me.
You could pass in parameters to the console executable to run each utility function:
utility.exe /command=writeline /message="This is a test"
I like using this command line parser:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/command_line.aspx
Related
Everyone.
Please I am new to c# program. I want to ask is it is possible to combine 3 separate independent programs to one executable file.
To explain what I mean:
program_1 has its' own .sln
program_2 has its' own .sln
program_2 has its' own .sln
,and I want to has a single .sln to output a single program.exe
They are all console APP.
Any guide would be highly appreciated
You should have one solution and many projects in that solution.One of the project have program.cs that class is start point of the entire solution.Usually you will see program.cs in the Console.app or WebApi etc or WinForm. When you right click on solution instead of creating ConsoleApp create ClassLibrary Project. But even your projects have different program.cs files you can use their classess in your other projects.
I'm trying to develop an Application in .Net4, that creates a custom Window, inserts custom controls and saves it in a directory. My next challenge is how I can generate/build additional code from my Visual Studio Solution in a WPF .exe Aplication. I need only some classes that will be generated and transformed to a .exe. This classes will give the logic to navigate from one Window to another.
Here is a little diagram that I did for the question:
Things that I have researched:
CSharpCodeProvider: I can pass some classes in a string[] but I don't know how they will work with dependency, or when a error/bug occurs it will be difficult to see where the error is. And finally worst thing is that I can't set a location to build this .exe. It's built in the main Solution/Bin/Debug.
MSBuild: Here I can set the location where I will build the solution, but for this I need an extra Visual Studio Solution. What I'm trying to do is to have inside my Application a Build button that can build like in Visual Studio a .exe program but with custom classes that I will have in my Application.
I don't know if its possible, I was looking for it but I'm a little bit lost. I see in http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/ that the have a builder, and they can set the location and build a .exe from the code. The only difference from SharpDevelop is that my controls and Window are customs.
UPDATE:
Maybe what I'm trying to do is better with other tools. Maybe compiling C# in runtime is not he best way. I will appreciate another ways to solve the problem.
What I do is Creating a new extra project for this .exe and must just copy/paste this .exe to each Project location.
But this is not very useful, if every time we must copy/paste this .exe
I just searching or a solution. I made this as a alternative solution but I don't like it so I will continue to investigate for a generation tool or something else.
There are a lot of variables and methods in my program and I want to seperate some of them in other class files. But as the program grows the methods and functions can change.
I searched on the net but many people generally speaking for dll files. Without making a dll file, how can I arrange my code and split into small class files?
Yes, just split it out in to a separate file in a new class but still inside the same project. The term for what you are doing is called Code Refactoring. There are some tools built in to Visual Studio to make it easier to do, and there are some 3rd party tools that add even more features to make it easier to do.
But all it boils down to is just making new classes in the same project and referencing those new classes from where you took the code out from.
You can add folders to your solution. Classes are by default a namespaceprovider, so that classes in this folder have a different namespace.
For example if your default-namespace is MyNameSpace and you create a folder called Entity then all classes in this folder have the namespace MyNameSpace.Entity
And all Items in a project are compiled to one single dll or exe
Just add more classes to the project and put the data and behavior (methods) into the appropriate classes. The project will still build into a single exe or dll.
Generally, it's better to add a second project under the same solution call it "CommonLib" or something like that. Then you add it as a reference to the main application and set up the project so that the applications build depends on the libraries build. Add a using statement for the common lib where ever you want to use those objects. This is definitely better for large scale or enterprise applications. There's a pretty decent chance that somewhere down the line you'll want to reuse some of this code, if everything builds into a single exe that won't be an option.
I have a c# solution with two regular projects and a setup project. One of the regular projects is an executable, while the other is a dll, that I also use in other solutions. The dll project relies on there being a certain event log source, that it can log to, and since the program is intended to be run by users that are not allowed to create log sources, this source must be created at installation.
I have done this by creating an installer class for my executable project, creating the log source in the installer, and included that installer in my custom actions in the setup project. This works, but now I have to create a similar installer for every other project, that also uses that dll.
The best solution would be, if I could write an installer for the dll, and then choose the dll for the custom actions in the setup project. This way I would only have to state the log creation requirement once. However, I am not able to select the dll project output for the custom actions in the setup project.
Another good solution would be, if I could somehow specify that the installer for the executable should be transitive, such that it would also perform install actions for any projects that the executable project depended on, but I don't know how to specify that requirement.
So what can I do to avoid duplicating installation code between different projects?
You should be able to add an installer class to your DLL then register the DLL for execution of custom actions in a setup project. If you have tried this and encountered problems, could you please be more specific about which version of Visual Studio and which type of setup project you are using?
I just have a MyApplication.Installation assembly where I put a custom action that creates the event source. All my setup projects reference this assembly and invoke its custom action.
How about this? You create a simple batch file or a powershell script to create the log file that you want to create.You could make an installer for the dll file(or even the entire solution it doesn't matter.) You can then invoke the batch file that you just wrote from the installer.[Refer here] . This way, you are not duplicating the creation logic for a dependent files/resources; and you can use the same batch file for multiple setup projects basically(provided they use the same resources.)
I hope this answers your question.
One step further, what environment are your clients on? Are they still on Win XP(SP2 or before)? If that is the case, you have to do something similar to what you already have in mind right now. However, if that is not the case, if your clients are on Win 7, You could use nuget to publish your bins(Refer here). I admit that this is still looked at as a source code sharing solution. But I believe that the approach can be extended to publishing binaries too.
There are 5 console apps working off each other's outputs and are separately installed on my computer (C# 4.0, I am the author) . Management would like to distribute this suite of apps to other users, but aren't thrilled about asking non-tech users to install/configure 5 separate applications. Is there any way I can compile each program down into a .dll and reference them through a single master application?
Q. The main issue seems to be that you don't want 5 separate installation steps?
A. Make an installer for the suite :) Use any MSI builder (WiX, Visual Studio setup projects, InstallShield, and many others; Heck, you could even do an XCOPY deployment in most cases)
Q. How do I directly invoke these programs from within a single process?
A. Options:
Load the assemblies in your AppDomain.
Use a separate AppDomain in case of name(space) conflicts or version conflicts
Q. How do I optionally 'hide' the presence of the external console apps from view
A. Look at ilmerge to possibly combine the 'external' assemblies so they aren't visible anymore. If you can't use ilmerge (conflicts, or e.g. WPF apps) you might embed them as resources and load them on demand as per 1. and 2. above
Update: https://libz.codeplex.com/ is a nice looking project that makes this easy (haven't tried it myself)
Just because each of them is a separate .exe file doesn't mean you can't treat them as one application. And they don't have to be installed or configured separately either.
But a much better solution would be to rewrite each of the applications, so that they expose classes or interfaces that can be used without actually running the application. This way, communication between the parts is going to be much easier.
In .Net, the only difference between .exe and .dll is that you can run .exe directly. But you can treat both as libraries, so you can use functionality from one .exe in another .exe. Another step might be separating the core of each application into a .dll and make the .exes just deal with input and output. With this, the combined application wouldn't have all the code that it doesn't need from the other ones.
Its possible if every assembly is using different class names. Just include the whole source code when you compile the final version in one project.
Go to Project's properties, Application and change OutputType from Console to Class Library.
EDIT
Would like to express my doubts on architectual desicion like this, correct me if I'm wrong in my thinking:
Having different EXE applications standalone, I presume, you have different Applications that works standalone.
What advantage you gain by converting them in DLL's and puting them together in one master app ? Why do not just use this EXEs with one master app and launch them ?
In this way you leave as is it already working + you add a layer (master app) so for final user all this seems like one single app.
That is possible - several options:
you put the functionality of each console app into a separate class within the same project and have one "master console app" provide their functionalities
you put the functionality of each console app into a separate class each in different project with DLL as target, then you reference those DLLs as needed from your "master console app"
Note: IF you go the DLL route you could embed the DLLs into the console EXE using the technique from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/02/03/jeffrey-richter-excerpt-2-from-clr-via-c-third-edition.aspx
With both option (all in one EXE or EXE + embedded DLLs) you can just make an XCOPY deployment if there are no other dependencies...