Databases
StackOverflow2013
Postsdbo
POHow do you share external dependencies between Visual Studio solutions?
Body
 

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals
  1. POHow do you share external dependencies between Visual Studio solutions?
    text
    copied!<p>I have a Java background so I’m used to having Maven handle all problem around downloading and keeping dependencies up to date. But in the .NET environment I have not yet found a good way to manage all these external dependencies. </p> <p>The main problem here is that I mass produce solutions and they all tend to depend on the same third party dll’s. But I don’t want to maintain separate copies of each component under each solution. So I need a way of linking all the different solutions to the same set of dll’s.</p> <p>I realized that one solution might be to include the external libraries in a ”library project” that is included in all solutions and let the other projects references them through it. (Or just make sure to reference the external dll’s from the same place for all projects.)</p> <p>But are there any better ways to do this? (Preferably using some sort of plug-in for Visual Studio.)</p> <p>I’ve looked at the <a href="http://vsdm.codeplex.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Visual Studio Dependency Manager</a> and it seems like a perfect match but have anyone tried it for real? I’ve also seen the .NET ports of Maven, but unfortunately I was not too impressed by the status of those. (But please go ahead and recommend them anyone if you think I should give them another try.)</p> <p>So what would be the smartest way to tackle this problem?</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> </p> <p>I realized that I needed to explain what I meant with <em>linking to the same set of dll’s</em>.</p> <p>One of the things I'm trying to achieve here is to avoid that the different solutions are referencing different versions of each component. If I update a component to a new version, it should be updated for all solutions upon next build. This would force me to make sure all solutions are up to date with the latest components.</p> <p><strong>Update 2:</strong> Note that this is an old question asked before tools like <a href="http://nuget.codeplex.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">NuGet</a> or <a href="http://www.openwrap.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">OpenWrap</a> existed. If anyone is willing to provide a more up-to-date, please go ahead and I will change the accepted answer.</p>
 

Querying!

 
Guidance
An individual column

Larger individual text columns get their own page to allow for proper reading.

SQuiL has stopped working due to an internal error.

If you are curious you may find further information in the browser console, which is accessible through the devtools (F12).

Reload