Add projects in C# solution which belong to another solution

Question

I have a solution which has a number of projects and each project refers to assemblies that are in a third party folder.

I now need to have access for debugging the code of those assemblies and fortunately I have to code.

I was wondering what the best way is to reference the code of the assemblies in my current solution?

Should I remove all my references to the assemblies (in third party folder) and then add the projects of those assemblies to my current solution or is there a better way? Although this gives me access to the code, the problem I see here is the assemblies were originally in a third party folder so I will need to make sure I have to switch back to the third party folder when I check my code back in.

There must be a better way than this?

Answer 1

It is not good idea to debug third party assemblies due to licensing restrictions. But if you want to do it, you only can remove references on dll's and add references to projects. You can automate your build to change references to dll's for release builds

Answer 2

You actually just need the corresponding pdb files of the third party DLLs. The pdb file contains all necessary information. No need to remove the references.

Answer 3

You run your project while having reference to 3rdParty folder. Open those library code in seperate visual studio instance and use "attach to process" option in debug menu

Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6wf8e4z(v=vs.100).aspx to know how to do this.

Answer 4

If you have the corresponding *.pdb file to the DLLs in question, you might getting away with just adding them to your solution. They need, of course, to be copied into the same location as their DLL files.