How to include functionality from one project into another in the same solution?

Question

In my company, we are creating C# client/server applications as follows:
We create three project inside one single Visual Studio solution:

• Product.General
• Product.Client
• Product.Server

The "General" project contains functionality, to be used by both client and server parts.

In order to make this work, we compile the "Product.General" and add the binary as a reference to the "Product.Client" and "Product.Server" projects.

In our source code, this looks as follows:

In the "General" project:

namespace Product.Customer.Configuration
{
    public class SettingManager
    {
        ...
    }
}

In the "Server" project:

using Product.Customer.Configuration;
...
var settingManager = ...<SettingManager>();

I don't like, because amongst other first you need to get the "General" part compiled before you can even start working on your "Client" or "Server" project.

How can I get such a system to work, without needing to add compiled binaries into projects' references?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You should add the reference with Add Project Reference and then select the General Project like this. and whenever you are making changes just do Ctrl+Shift+B to build the solution.

Answer 2

If you're working with Visual Studio, right click on the References menu in the Product.Client or Product.Server project, click Add Reference in the popup select the Projects tab and then add a checkmark where needed (in your case Product.General ) (see vivek nuna's answer ). I assume it's basically the same in something liked Rider.

If you're not using Visual Studio, but are using the new .NET ( not .NET Framework) you can use the dotnet cli tool like so

dotnet add path/to/Product.Client.csproj reference path/to/Product.General.csproj

If the working directory of the shell your using contains a.csproj file, you can omit the first path/to/*.csproj , so doing something like this should work

cd Product.Client
dotnet add ../Product.General/Product.General.csproj

If you're not using Visual Studio or some other IDE and for some reason can't use the dotnet cli tool, then you can manually edit the.csproj files, like so

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectReference Include="path/to/Product.General.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>