We have one master project that creates a single DLL with FEATURE_1, FEATURE_2 and FEATURE_3 as three conditional compilation symbols that enable those respective features.
MyLib.dll => has FEATURE_1, FEATURE_2 and FEATURE_3 compiled in
We now wish to have the same master project spit out 3 different DLLs as follows:
MyLib.1.dll => has only FEATURE_1 compiled in
MyLib.2.dll => has only FEATURE_2 compiled in
MyLib.3.dll => has only FEATURE_3 compiled in
At present we build within VS2013 and those compile constants are defined inside the .csproj file (within the <DefineConstants> </DefineConstants> tags), which hard-codes them.
Is it possible to pass them via a command line so we can still maintain one master csproj but build the 3 different flavors in the RELEASE configuration just by changing the command line (eg: gcc's -D<buildFlag> style) ? The solution has other projects and they're designed to work with the RELEASE configuration. I'm also open to any other technique that is easy to use and maintain.
We're really trying to avoid creating pseudo-projects or affecting other projects in the solution (21 projects in the solution) - seems like an overkill/hackish for something very simple.
I haven't done anything with the command line, but to solve similar problems, I created separate projects (that define the Framework Target and any conditional compilation symbols), and then add all the project files as LINKED files. In this way, I only have to modify a single set of source files, but each project compiles into its own DLL.
To add a file to a project as a linked
Right click the project and click Add Existing Item...
Select the file (or files) you want to Add.
Instead Of clicking the Add button, click the arrow next to the Add button, and click Add as Link.
I'm not sure if this will work for your case, but it sure has saved me lots of time when developing libraries for different .NET framework versions.
Is it possible that you have a complete turnaround?
Instead of defining all features in a single library and then disable some of them, you can create individual projects for each features, and then at packaging phase merge the smaller assemblies into a single one.
Microsoft has ILMerge, while ILRepack is an open source alternative,
https://www.nuget.org/packages/ilmerge
https://www.nuget.org/packages/ILRepack/
Then you are free of conditional compilation, which is too difficult to manage, and the complexity is moved to your packaging scripts, which can be easily managed and checked into source code management.
Related
I am building a few different C# libraries that both depend on a single C# file we'll call Dep.cs, and these dll's need to be used together in a Unity project. I'd like to set up these projects in the following way:
The C# libraries can be built independently of one another using Visual Studio
C# libraries (i.e. dll's) can be imported into a Unity project without conflicting symbols
The C# library projects (i.e. the source code for each library via git submodule for example) can be imported into a Unity project without conflicting sources.
I've solved (1) by including Dep.cs in each library project that requires it, though this causes issue with (2). And I've solved (3) by putting the dependency in a folder like Dependencies~ so that Unity ignores the file (this way no duplicate classes are found).
I'm having trouble solving (2) however. I thought I'd be able to add Dep.cs as reference in the VS solution but This doesn't seem to work. I've heard of Assembly References but I am not sure if they do what I need.
You can use "Add File as Link" from Visual Studio "Add Existing File" screen. It also works well with git submodule, just place Dep.cs anywhere in a parent folder or in the solution's root directory.
To get the same result you can also directly edit the .csproj file and add a compile instruction:
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="..\..\Path\To\YourFile.cs" Link="YourFile.cs" />
</ItemGroup>
This method solves all the issues you mentioned.
To solve my problem I decided to modify the external scripts to be internal this way both dll's can compile with that source and not conflict with one another. The rest of the setup in my question remained the same so this solved (2) for me without compromising (1) and (3).
My situation:
I have a solution A with hundreds of projects,
Some of projects are class libraries and are referenced from other projects.
Now I want to create a new solution B which will consist of subset of projects of solution A. I start by adding the first pre-existing project into this new solution B. This project is referencing couple of class libraries from solution A. Therefore it is logical that these libraries cannot be found and I cannot build. Of course I could add all the referenced projects manually into the new solution B but that would take quite a long time, considering the total amount of projects that I need to add.
Is there some built in Visual Studio feature that can take care of this on my behalf? I.e. I will be offered an opportunity to import all the referenced projects at once and the B.sln file will be updated automatically.
I also have a ReSharper extension but I couldn't find such feature in there as well.
EDIT:
Some more detail on what I am trying to achieve. A.sln has lots of application projects and literally hundreds of class libraries. I want to create a new B.sln for one particular application project from A.sln and only add the class libraries that it is referencing, directly or indirectly... But the dependencies can go up to 15 levels deep so manually removing projects from original A.sln to create B.sln is really not suitable for me as I would have to carefully consider each one of the projects that I would be manually removing from the original sln file, subsequently reviewing the csproj files to find whether the application I am interested in does not indirectly depends on them via one of its direct references.
Copy paste your current solution file and start with it. Open it in new Visual Studio Instance. Remove your projects one by one. Instead of adding new projects, removing unnecessary ones will be more easy for you. As far as I know there is no such feature in Visual Studio as you want.
Removing will be more easy since projects are already there. Do not use Visual Studio to remove project but open sln file in suitable programmers notepad. Your projects are added to sln file as below lines.
Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "Example.Integration.App1", "..\Example.Integration\Example.Integration.App1\Example.Integration.App1.csproj", "{E3977144-AFBA-451D-894C-1F89AA008041}"
EndProject
Removing such lines will be more easy if your projects has naming convention.
The best way to port references from an existing project that I've found is to generate a template for that project.
On the File menu, click Export Template. The Export Template wizard opens.
Choose project template and move through the wizard
Click Finish. Your project is exported into a .zip file and placed in the specified output location, and, if selected, imported into Visual Studio.
Now, when you setup a new project for solution B. You'll be able to choose the project template from A and all the file structure/references are preserved.
Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/xkh1wxd8%28v=vs.100%29.aspx
I have two very long and detailed .csproj files.
I want to combine them into one.
I used text comparer but the items are not in the same order
and it's hard to isolate differences.
How would you recommend to combine them?
(they have compile, include, post build and after build events)
edit:
I want to merge 2 unrelated projects with some common dependencies
Copy the files from project 1 into the project 2 folder. Then turn on "Show all files" so you can see the files that aren't in the project. Then right-click each file and choose "Include in project".
I would probably do most of this in Visual Studio. You can either drag the files you need from one project to the other, or you can copy all the files from one project folder to the other in the file system and turn on "show all files" in the solution explorer to show which need to be added. You will then need to align the namespaces. The Class View window can help identify types which do not fall inside the right namespace. A refactoring tool like Resharper can also help fix up the namespaces.
If you have explicit pre or post build events in each project, I would use the VS GUI to show these and manually combine. If you have custom build targets/tasks in the files, I would isolate these in a good text/XML editor and manually union them as required.
The other thing you will have to do is to add references to the final project which it did not originally require but were required by the other project. It should be quite quick to identify which references need to be added, by attempting compilation and inspecting any errors.
I've a same project that need to be compiled with .NET and Compact .NET Framework.
It is possible to create a C#
compiler that will compile my
project with both framework ?
Some feature aren't present in
CF.NET Framework so I created it by
myself (creating classes having
exactly the same name & options that
in .NET Framework. If I decore this
classes with an attribute like
[CF35] it's possible to parse the
project and :
Use this class when compile the
project using CF.NET
Ignore this class when compile the project using
.NET
?
Thanks for all constructive answers.
[EDIT]
I know the solution that consists to create two projects referencing the same files.
Problem is, you should every time compile both manually.
Moreover, when you add a file to one, you need to open the second and reference it too, that it's just borring to do and according that we are many people to work on the same project, I would like to do this part automatically.
Seems to be possible?
[EDIT 2]
All works fine except ... resources files !
So, to resume, I've three project :
the development project (CF.NET)
the release project (CF.NET 3.5), including all files via ""
the release project (NET 3.5), including all files via ""
As said, all works fine, but now my problem is using Resources files.
What's the method to apply to use it?
When I use the development project, Resource file is correctly retrieved
When I use the two other projects, ResourceManager throws MissingManifestResourceException
Any idea?
You'll need to create different build configurations for each and define a custom flag like USE_CF. Then wrap your custom classes with #if USE_CF and #endif so they get ignored when compiling without that flag
The basic idea would be to decorate your code with #if compiler directives for each framework version?
#if CFNET
// .net CF code
#else
// .net code
#endif
From here one you have two options:
A) 1 project file with custom build configurations
If you would like to have everything in 1 csproj file you'll need to modify it manually. Since this is a msbuild file this is more of a msbuild problem. I figure you would need to do the following things:
Use 2 platform names say "NET" and "CF" (instead of the default Any CPU or x86)
Define CF constant (From now on Edit csproj):
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Platform)' == 'CF'">
<DefineConstants>CF</DefineConstants>
</PropertyGroup>
Import correct build targets depending on selected platform:
<Import Condition="'$(Platform)' == 'NET'" Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Condition="'$(Platform)' == 'CF'" Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\<CFtargets>.targets" />
I don't know the targets file name of CF since I don't have it installed. It sould be somewhere in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\**.targets
B) 2 project files each containing the appropriate build configuration
As I initially pointed out, and also some commenter pointed out, the best solution is to have 2 project files, that you keep in sync. You can have the same source files in both project files.
So an idea would be (instead of copying the file list manually each time) to
think about using T4 templates, to keep the source files in sync (and have 2 solutions, so you wouldn't be prompted to reload the whole solution each time) or to
modify the two csproj files and use a wildcard compile tag like this:
<Compile Include="**/*.cs"/>
There's only one C# compiler, it emits the exact same IL for whatever platform. What's different are the reference assemblies, you have to use the CF versions for the project that targets CF, the desktop versions for the project that targets .NET. Which requires two projects. They can reference the same source code files. Adding CF-only source code files is now of course no longer a problem.
Keeping projects in sync is a feature available in VS2010. Intended for Silverlight, pointless for a CF project of course since it no longer supports it.
a better way is to create your normal project class library (.NET) and add all of your code. Then create your second class library project (.NET CF) but reference the code files from the first project (not copy, but reference). Then you end up with 2 DLL's and you don't have to deal with nasty ugly compiler directives. You get the result you want with no extra work to maintain both projects. Obvisouly you would need to be careful with what you put in the code since .NET CF is limited compared to .NET. I don't know how to add file references (shortcuts) using visual studio but I open the proj file in notepad and use relative paths to the files to include. I've used this method for .NET/.NET CF and also .NET/Silverlight
Also, have a look at Portable Library Tool CTP http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/b0e0b5e9-e138-410b-ad10-00cb3caf4981/?localeName=ko-kr
In C++ projects there is the possibility to set a custom build step for files. Is there a similar functionality in C# projects? I couldn't really find anything.
One idea would be to create a second project (makefile or c++) and move the files there.
MsBuild should work for you although it might take some time to figure out how it works. It appears that you can setup a step that runs prior to building each .cs file by separating each .cs file into its own build group.
In MSBuild script for compiling each .cs file into an EXE, Dino Chiesa comments:
By using the %(CSFile.identity)
scalar, we run this task once for each
file. The converse would be
#(CSFile.identity). That would run
the compile once, for all files,
compiling them all together into a
single assembly.
Also, these links might help:
Custom build step for C# files
Master Complex Builds with MSBuild
No custom build step for individual files with C# projects. You could probably hack something together with MSBuild...
Look at the BeforeBuild and AfterBuild targets in your csproj file.
I think you are on the right track with your comment about multiple projects. Combine this with the fact that you can include multiple projects within a single Solution and you may have your answer. I use this functionality to build several components at a time and it works quite well.