CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio-2010reference
Jimmy D
Jimmy D

Reputation: 5376

What is the best way for multiple solutions/projects to reference a common assembly?

I have several Visual Studio solutions/projects (some VB, some C#) that all reference a common DLL at design time. This DLL does not have to be copied to the output folder as it is only needed while writing code. Every few months this DLL will be updated to a newer version and all of my projects need to reference the updated version.

What is the best way to handle this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 299

Answers (2)

dsynkd
dsynkd

Reputation: 2145

You have to use a Shared Assembly, shared in GAC (Global Assembly Cache).

Say, you have programmed a class, a piece of software, whatever you have, and you want to make it a shared assembly.

First you make it an assembly by creating a new Class Library Project in VS and transporting all of the code to that project. Don’t build/run it yet! Note that we just transport the code but the assembly (the .DLL file) is not actually made yet, because we have not built the project yet.

Before building the assembly, we have to create/share a key by which the assembly is known, in 2 steps:

a) create the key by executing the cmd below in VS cmd:

sn -k "C:[DirectoryToPlaceKey][KeyName].key" b) share it by adding the attribute below to the AsseblyInfo.vb/cs file in the properties folder of your Class Library project:

In VB.Net:

In C#:

[Assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("C:[directory containing the key file][KeyName].key")] (just copy and paste this into the AssemblyInfo.vb/cs file, but write your directory and file name instead).

Now, you MAKE the assembly by building the project. Just build the project (just press F5 once, at least!). By doing so, the .dll file we need (the assembly) is created in the “bin” folder in the same folder of the project.

Now we share it by Copying the .dll file into the GAC (Global Assembly Cache: it’s where all the assemblies are gathered together. The directory is: “C:\windows\Microsoft.Net\assembly\GAC_MSIL” but you don’t need to know that since the tool below does that for you~) by executing the command below in the VS cmd:

gacutil -I "C:[PathToBinDirectoryInVSProject]\myGAC.dll"

YOU'RE DONE! You may now reference and use the shared assembly from all your applications, and whenever you want to update, just update the shared assembly.

Hope that helps!

Upvotes: 2

Kamil Lach
Kamil Lach

Reputation: 4629

You can create nuget resources, and use Nuget Server (Lastest version of teamcity support it) - and all updates w'll be handled by nuget.

Other approach is to create common folder and all project point's to dll in this folder (relativly) in this case you need to udate dll in one folder (after rebuild solution dll'll be updated automaticly)

Ofcourse you can allways install dll in GAC (Global Assembly Cache) this is handled by tool called gacutil.exe (in net is lot of example how to handle it).

Upvotes: 0

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