Visual Studio C# .dll vs. project referencing

Question

I have two C# projects in my Visual Studio solution. Project B needs to reference code in Project A. Both projects need to be compiled to dll's and then used in an application.

In Project BI can set a reference to project A and that allows things to compile. But when I actually use the resulting dll's in my application it throws a missing assembly reference error.

My current solution is to tell Project B to reference the bin/debug/ProjectA.dll. Everything works when running the application with this configuration. But this solution has a number of problems. For instance, any code written in Project A that B relies on wont be visible to B until A has been rebuilt. And building the solution relies on A being built first.

Is there a way that I can add a reference to Project A but have the resulting dll built so it looks for the ProjectA.dll reference and not the project itself? I expect there is, but my google searching has resulted in no answers.

Answer 1

For instance, any code written in Project A that B relies on wont be visible to B until A has been rebuilt. And building the solution relies on A being built first.

This is not a problem, this is, in my view, a benefit. As you are guaranteed to not be able access functionality which is not there. In case of a new functionality, one may say, it's not a big deal: I can not find it, got an exception/error so I know something went wrong. But what about updated code ? In this way you are guaranteed that B will use only most updated version of A .

Is there a way that I can add a reference to ProjectA but have the resulting dll built so it looks for the ProjectA.dll reference and not the project itself?

You may simply implement post-build event on your project A which copies it and all dependent DLLs in some predefined central location, where B.dll will be copied too. If your B.dll depends on A.dll , OS, following default behavior, will search for A.dll in the same folder where B.dll is, for first, before checking %PATH% variable content.