CODEWITHSUNDEEP
portable-class-library
John
John

Reputation: 7049

Platform-specific dependencies of portable class libraries

I have a piece of code that compiles for both the Silverlight and the .NET targets. It depends on Json.NET and SharpZipLib. My goal is to make a portable library that Silverlight and .NET projects can both link against.

Since there is no version of SharpZipLib targeting "portable-net40+sl50", I have a problem.

However, if I knew how, I would be willing to write the wrapper code myself.

So: How can I write a portable library that depends on Silverlight's SharpZipLib when being linked against from Silverlight and depends on .NET's SharpZipLib when being linked against from .NET?

Is that at all possible or is that something only Microsoft can do?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 104

Answers (1)

Anders Gustafsson
Anders Gustafsson

Reputation: 15971

If your code uses a limited sub-set of the SharpZipLib API, you could create a "dummy" PCL library comprising this API subset, but without any functionality implemented.

What you then must do is to change the strong name (assembly name and signing) and version of the existing .NET and Silverlight SharpZipLib:s to be the same as your "dummy" PCL SharpZipLib and re-compile the platform specific libraries as well.

With this set of assemblies (PCL, .NET and Silverlight) you will now be able to consume the PCL library from other PCL libraries. In a platform specific application that makes use of PCL libraries that in turn consumes the SharpZipLib library, you should explicitly reference the platform specific SharpZipLib library that has the same strong name and version as the PCL analogue.

You should find more about this technique ("bait-and-switch") here and here. The PCL Storage project is also a good example of where this technique has been applied.

Upvotes: 2

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