I'm still learning .NET (specifically C#), and I'm curious as the advantages of creating and referencing a dll versus having a multi-project solution? I have the opportunity to do either one, but I'm not sure which would be better. The projects that would be dlls are rather small, but will potentially be reused. Should size and reusability be a factor when making this decision? Thanks for any and all help.
You're still technically referencing other assemblies as each project generates an assembly.
One benefit of having a multi-project solution is that you don't need to build two different solutions- if you change code in both projects the whole solutions builds in one step. Also you can debug both projects at the same time (which is possible with separate solutions, but trickier).
Size may be a factor in build times, but unless they are huge it shouldn't be a huge issue. If projects are used by other solutions it may make sense to keep them in separate solutions so you can control the build process better.
Having separate solutions can also help you keep the interfaces constant since it's moderately harder to change interfaces through the whole stack.
Each project will still output it's own assembly, but grouping projects does make debugging and building easier.
If you are confident that you can reuse the individual projects in the future, start with a multi project solution. Design your projects carefully to minimize interdependence. If you do a good job of this, it shouldn't be too hard to separate them at a later date when you decide you want to develop an individual project independently from the whole solution.
If the assemblies aren't going to be shared amongst other projects I'd just have them in the same solution.
If the code is shared between projects that's different. I tend to treat code which is shared between projects the same way as any other third party binary - that is, I take a copy of the DLL at a specific version and reference the DLL.
The advantage of that is that, in 6 months or a year down the line when both projects that share the code are on different release schedules, each one has complete control as to when it takes the hit of updating the shared code and dealing with potentially breaking changes.
If you've just built the shared code directly into your project you're at the mercy of changes any other project requires - not a good place to be!
when you are initially developing the consuming programme i find it easiest to have a multi-project solution. but when later you develop another programme that also consumes teh same dll's, just reference tehm.
I would suggest you to add library project and you referencing project in the same solution. You reference the library project using Project reference. That would help you to debug and maintain your code better.
Related
I started at a new company which manages multiple projects (around 30). However, all their projects are in one git-repository. I know wanted to split all our projects into one git-repository per project. To achieve that I went ahead and extracted every folder into a new folder, containing it's own git repository.
However, some references were broken. While investigating I found that project referencing was done in multiple ways, dependent on the project
Including the entire solution/project in the current solution.
Referencing the .csproj-file of another solution.
Referencing the built .dll (bin/debug).
In my opinion, the first way should not the way to be, right? This seems like a way too big overhead. So I'm split between 2 and 3, and I would like to hear how you people are doing it?
Looking forward for your input!
It's normal to have code you want to share between multiple solutions.
For this, we use projects like 'Infrastructure' or 'Logging' with their own CI builds. When done, we create a release build which uploads the dll's to a private nuget server.
These projects are than included as dll's in the other projects through nuget and updated when needed. You also don't break other solutions when you change something in your logging, you have to update the logging version first.
What I do is to have a nuget server in the company or you can use Azure DevOps to do that: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/artifacts/get-started-nuget?view=azure-devops.
After you set the nuget server you can update/import the packages for each project. So, when you update the code of any project, post it to the nuget server and you can update all other projects.
Your question sounds like "How to split a solution into smaller solutions".
30 projects is not that much, At 30 C#-projects it's just the starting point to split your solution.The solution is the base for the Repository also.
If you analyze the dependencies of C#-projects, you certainly can form kind of clusters,
are there basics- referenced by everything, and almost front end parts, referenced by nothing.
Basic-Projects (Depends from Nothing, but referenced by many) Tend to be more stable and have less frequent changes, it's also more dangerous to change, more danger of braking changes. It's good to make access to them more complicated (=put it in a different solution). You do not change it frivolously, just because you see the source code and you edit it.
The code and architecture becomes more cleaner, since programmers tend to use a wrapper, derived classes or interfaces to do, what they want to do, inside their active solution.
They do not change dependent solutions as fast and easy any more. So it stays more stable.
You can consider a Solution as a product of it's own, as a Library or Final Product.
So splitting projects in the aspect, what is potentially being used in upcoming projects in the next years, and what is being used as a product for one client only.
Suppose you start a new Product next week, what Projects would you most likely include there ? They belong into a library.
It's also simplifying life to new programmers, if you tell them "Just use it, you don't need to dig in the source code", or "get familiar with this solution only" if you group your C# projects into such clusters. They are not so overwhelmed by quantity.
Also the branching is done per solution, you create a branch on one solution per client request, and a branch of another solution to stay up to date with technology. This is much easier to handle with smaller bundles of projects.
Nuget-Server as proposed by others, is a good way to maintain updates. Without a Server you link to DLLs directly. If you do not have many updates, either you invest time in setting up the server, or in copying a few DLL's around, twice a year. One is not more complicated or time consuming as the other. Manual jobs done by different people cause the risk of human errors. But the task "copy all DLL's from one directory to another directory" might still work. Do not reference the output directory from one solution directly to the other solution. Put the "productive DLL" in a separate directory and do your update by saying "yes, I want to update - use it now". "Automated update" just if someone decides to built the other solution might cause trouble.
I am new to SpecFlow and I am wanting to reuse steps/tests (.feature files essentially) between solutions. I know there is a way to reuse steps between projects in the same solution by adding a reference to the project but I'm not sure exactly how to do essentially the same thing to a different solution. Thanks for any help on this one.
You cant reuse .feature files but you can reuse step definitions and hooks.
You will have to add reference to the project.
Here is the link how to reference a project in Visual studio: Link
I do not think it is possible to use steps from a different solution. You will need to include them in your working solution somewhere to use them. I don't think Visual Studio has the option to let you use inter-solution code unless you have compiled it and reference it within your working solution.
Doing this is a bit of an anti pattern. The reason for having feature files is to talk about WHAT the application does and WHY its important. So feature files should contain things that are unique to your application domain, and there won't be much overlap between projects
When you write features this way even common functionality isn't really worth sharing, because the complexity outweighs the simplicity of doing things again.
For example logging in is ripe for sharing between applications but all you need in a feature is
Given I am registered
When I login
Then I should be logged in
This is so simple that its easier to just write another one for your second application.
Most steps that people have shared other the years are all about HOW things are done e.g. clicking on things, filling in fields etc.. These generally lead to bloated scenarios and again the cost outweighs the benefits.
If you still feel there is alot of shared behaviour between your applications you may have an architectural problem where you need to extract the shared behaviour into its own application, and have your applications delegate responsibility.
I hope this is not an obscure question. I expect there are several ways people accomplish it and the approach I'm using seems excessively labor-intensive.
How do I break apart a presentation-layer project (XAML/WPF) into several temporary "side-by-side" projects so that I can make enhancements efficiently in VS 2015 and unit-test them quickly? The end result being that, once the unit tests are successful, I combine the projects back as they were again (with a focus on organization rather than developer efficiency).
The problem for me is not one of analyzing the inter-dependencies, not one of identifying project boundaries, and not one of adding the newly created (temporary) project references where needed. The biggest problem I have is with all the silly XAML namespace references (clr-namespace:). They need updating so they will point to the new home assemblies (assembly=) for the referenced resources. This is a ton of overhead and doesn't always have a pay-off since it is temporary work in the first place. Where is the tool to do this for me? And revert it back out afterwards so that I don't accidentally promote temporary XAML changes into source control?
I thought about managing an entirely separate set of sln's and csproj's for WIP development but this is impossible for the same underlying reason based on the way those XAML namespace references (clr-namespace:) work. Also it is hard to do it as a team effort.
More info:
The reason I ask is because we have a number of projects with XAML resources (user controls, resource dictionaries, etc). Some of these get quite large because they are organized in a certain way that makes them a common place to put stuff (ie. all the combobox lookup - ALT-down - windows, or all common data templates, or what-not). Over time it becomes a problem because VS build operations take too long (impacts development efficiency). VS build operations get slower for larger projects:
a project with a centralized list of all data templates is likely to have a lot of things above it in the dependency stack, causing numerous other projects to be rebuilt after every change
any project with a central repository of anything will grow large and take a long time to compile (5 seconds /project is about my limit while I'm actively developing XAML, with a cap at 10 seconds to do the entire build operation and start debugging)
The biggest problem I have is with all the silly XAML namespace
references (clr-namespace:). They need updating so they will point to
the new home assemblies (assembly=)
Generally, ReSharper does great job, when refactorig xaml. It analyzes xaml files, and fixes wrong xml namespaces. However, you would need to go trough all the files, one by one.
You can also use just plain Find/Replace dialog and replace ;assemmly=TempProject with empty string. Write powershell script for that, if you need to do it more often.
And revert it back out afterwards so that I don't accidentally promote
temporary XAML changes into source control?
You just need to be carefull when doing check-ins, compare files with they original version and investigate changes
However, there is only one good solution for you. Split the projects into wpf usercontrol libraries. Not just for testing purposes, but permanently. Try to break your large resource files. Don't use practices like common place to put stuff when working on large projects. Consider using loosely coupled design and IoC (assembly injection instead of direct references) when possible. Create this shared assembly, which all other assemblies will reference. Don't create component that references lot of other components, but let the others inject themselves instead. Take a look at prism for an insipration: http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/prism-introduction
I googled this a little but couldn't find a good result.
Right now I'm building a web site and I'm trying to make it as correct as possible from a design point of view from the beginning.
The problem I'm now facing is that when deciding to start with logging I needed a project to place this code in. As I could not find a suitable place in my currect projects I thought: hey, why not a logging class library?
Is there a general guideline on how many projects you should have? I know this would be a rather small project but it would be nice to entirely get it out of my way!
Any hints are appreciated :)
Absolutely you should have a logging library. And if you're going to make this as 'correct as possible from a design point of view' and your proect is less than trivial then you should definitely have some number of projects. The thing is, we have no idea what you're working on besides the fact that it's a web app. It's the biz domain that often determines how complex your solution has to be.
I'd go for a three-tier architecture for a small project.
This would include:
Application Layer
Business Layer
Data Layer
but if you want to add logging, it would be best to create another project. This would also help you so that if you want to add logging to another application, you can just include the logging project.
Either way would work, if you are concerned about project limit in a solutions. Don't be.
I myself would put it in a separate project or a utility project.
We have a solution with 200+ projects. The downside is long load time in Visual Studio. But past that the only issue is making sure you have enough RAM.
Also, MSBuild.exe has built-in support for SLN files, so look into using that instead of Visual Studio if you are doing automated builds.
"That which changes together should be packaged together", I forget where that guideline comes from (Code Complete maybe?).
In other words your assemblies (projects) should represent a coherent abstraction in the same way your classes/objects do at a lower level.
So yes, a separate logging project is the right way to go (although do check out log4net or Microsoft's logging block before you roll your own!)
Put a logging into a separate project is perfectly fine.However it really depends on the scope of your project.I normally setup my project like this
YourProject.Web(web project)
YourProject.Core(all the business logic)
YourProject.Web.Tests(Watin tests)
YourProject.Web.Core.UnitTests(Unit tests)
YourProject.Web.Core.IntegrationTests(Integration tests)
I suggest you to download some open source Project from asp.net to see how the project have been organized.
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We have a solution with around 100+ projects, most of them C#. Naturally, it takes a long time to both open and build, so I am looking for best practices for such beasts. Along the lines of questions I am hoping to get answers to, are:
how do you best handle references between projects
should "copy local" be on or off?
should every project build to its own folder, or should they all build to the same output folder(they are all part of the same application)
Are solutions' folders a good way of organizing stuff?
I know that splitting the solution up into multiple smaller solutions is an option, but that comes with its own set of refactoring and building headaches, so perhaps we can save that for a separate thread :-)
You might be interested in these two MSBuild articles that I have written.
MSBuild: Best Practices For Creating Reliable Builds, Part 1
MSBuild: Best Practices For Creating Reliable Builds, Part 2
Specificially in Part 2 there is a section Building large source trees that you might want to take a look at.
To briefly answer your questions here though:
CopyLocal? For sure turn this off
Build to one or many output folders? Build to one output folder
Solution folders? This is a matter of taste.
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
My Book: Inside the Microsoft Build Engine : Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build
+1 for sparing use of solution folders to help organise stuff.
+1 for project building to its own folder. We initially tried a common output folder and this can lead to subtle and painful to find out-of-date references.
FWIW, we use project references for solutions, and although nuget is probably a better choice these days, have found svn:externals to work well for both 3rd party and (framework type) in-house assemblies. Just get into the habit of using a specific revision number instead of HEAD when referencing svn:externals (guilty as charged:)
Unload projects you don't use often, and buy a SSD. A SSD doesn't improve compile time, but Visual Studio becomes twice faster to open/close/build.
We have a similar problem as we have 109 separate projects to deal with. To answer the original questions based on our experiences:
1. How do you best handle references between projects
We use the 'add reference' context menu option. If 'project' is selected, then the dependency is added to our single, global solution file by default.
2. Should "copy local" be on or off?
Off in our experience. The extra copying just adds to the build times.
3. Should every project build to its own folder, or should they all build to the same output folder(they are all part of the same application)
All of our output is put in a single folder called 'bin'. The idea being that this folder is the same as when the software is deployed. This helps prevents issues that occur when the developer setup is different from the deployment setup.
4. Are solutions folders a good way of organizing stuff?
No in our experience. One person's folder structure is another's nightmare. Deeply nested folders just increase the time it takes to find anything. We have a completely flat structure but name our project files, assemblies and namespaces the same.
Our way of structuring projects relies on a single solution file. Building this takes a long time, even if the projects themselves have not changed. To help with this, we usually create another 'current working set' solution file. Any projects that we are working on get added in to this. Build times are vastly improved, although one problem we have seen is that Intellisense fails for types defined in projects that are not in the current set.
A partial example of our solution layout:
\bin
OurStuff.SLN
OurStuff.App.Administrator
OurStuff.App.Common
OurStuff.App.Installer.Database
OurStuff.App.MediaPlayer
OurStuff.App.Operator
OurStuff.App.Service.Gateway
OurStuff.App.Service.CollectionStation
OurStuff.App.ServiceLocalLauncher
OurStuff.App.StackTester
OurStuff.Auditing
OurStuff.Data
OurStuff.Database
OurStuff.Database.Constants
OurStuff.Database.ObjectModel
OurStuff.Device
OurStuff.Device.Messaging
OurStuff.Diagnostics
...
[etc]
We work on a similar large project here. Solution folders has proved to be a good way of organising things, and we tend to just leave copy local set to true. Each project builds to its own folder, and then we know for each deployable project in there we have the correct subset of the binaries in place.
As for the time opening and time building, that's going to be hard to fix without breaking into smaller solutions. You could investigate parallelising the build (google "Parallel MS Build" for a way of doing this and integrating into the UI) to improve speed here. Also, look at the design and see if refactoring some of your projects to result in fewer overall might help.
In terms of easing the building pain, you can use the "Configuration Manager..." option for builds to enable or disable building of specific projects. You can have a "Project [n] Build" that could exclude certain projects and use that when you're targeting specific projects.
As far as the 100+ projects goes, I know you don't want to get hammered in this question about the benefits of cutting down your solution size, but I think you have no other option when it comes to speeding up load time (and memory usage) of devenv.
What I typically do with this depends a bit on how the "debug" process actually happens. Typically though I do NOT set copy local to be true. I setup the build directory for each project to output everything to the desired end point.
Therefore after each build I have a populated folder with all dll's and any windows/web application and all items are in the proper location. Copy local wasn't needed since the dll's end up in the right place in the end.
Note
The above works for my solutions, which typically are web applications and I have not experienced any issues with references, but it might be possible!
We have a similar issue. We solve it using smaller solutions. We have a master solution that opens everything. But perf. on that is bad. So, we segment up smaller solutions by developer type. So, DB developers have a solution that loads the projects they care about, service developers and UI developers the same thing. It's rare when somebody has to open up the whole solution to get what they need done on a day to day basis. It's not a panacea -- it has it's upsides and downsides. See "multi-solution model" in this article (ignore the part about using VSS :)
I think with solutions this large the best practice should be to break them up. You can think of the "solution" as a place to bring together the necessary projects and perhaps other pieces to work on a solution to a problem. By breaking the 100+ projects into multiple solutions specialized to developing solutions for only a part of the overall problem you can deal with less at a given time there by speeding your interactions with the required projects and simplifying the problem domain.
Each solution would produce the output which it is responsible for. This output should have version information which can be set in an automated process. When the output is stable you can updated the references in dependent projects and solutions with the latest internal distribution. If you still want to step into the code and access the source you can actually do this with the Microsoft symbol server which Visual Studio can use to allow you to step into referenced assemblies and even fetch the source code.
Simultaneous development can be done by specifying interfaces upfront and mocking out the assemblies under development while you are waiting for dependencies that are not complete but you wish to develop against.
I find this to be a best practice because there is no limit to how complex the overall effort can get when you break down it down physically in this manner. Putting all the projects into a single solution will eventually hit an upper limit.
Hope this information helps.
We have about 60+ projects and we don't use solution files. We have a mix of C# and VB.Net projects. The performance was always an issue. We don't work on all the projects at the same time. Each developer creates their own solution files based on the projects they're working on. The solution files doesn't get checked into our source control.
All Class library projects would build to a CommonBin folder at the root of the source directory. Executable / Web Projects build to their individual folder.
We don't use project references, instead file based reference from the CommonBin folder. I wrote a custom MSBuild Task that would inspect the projects and determine the build order.
We have been using this for few years now and have no complaints.
It all has to do with your definition and view on what a solution and a project are. In my mind a solution is just that, a logical grouping of projects that solve a very specific requirement. We develop a large Intranet application. Each application within that Intranet has it's own solution, which may also contain projects for exes or windows services. And then we have a centralized framework with things like base classes and helpers and httphandlers/httpmodules. The base framework is fairly large and is used by all applications. By splitting up the many solutions in this way you reduce the amount of projects required by a solution, as most of them have nothing to do with one another.
Having that many projects in a solution is just bad design. There should be no reason to have that many projects under a solution. The other problem I see is with project references, they can really screw you up eventually, especially if you ever want to split up your solution into smaller ones.
My advice is to do this and develop a centralized framework (your own implementation of Enterprise Library if you will). You can either GAC it to share or you can directly reference the file location so that you have a central store. You could use the same tactic for centralized business objects as well.
If you want to directly reference the DLL you will want to reference it in your project with copy local false (somewhere like c:\mycompany\bin\mycompany.dll). A runtime you will need to add some settings to your app.config or web.config to make it reference a file not in the GAC or runtime bin. In all actuality it doesn't matter if it's copy local or not, or if the dll ends up in the bin or is even in the GAC, because the config will override both of those. I think it is bad practice to copy local and have a messy system. You will most likely have to copy local temporarily if you need to debug into one of those assemblies though.
You can read my article on how to use a DLL globally without the GAC. I really dislike the GAC mostly because it prevents xcopy deployment and does not trigger an autorestart on applications.
http://nbaked.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/gac-alternative/
Set CopyLocal=false will reduce build time, but can cause different issues during deployment time.
There are many scenarios, when you need to have Copy Local’ left to True, e.g.
Top-level projects,
Second-level dependencies,
DLLs called by reflection.
My experience with setting CopyLocal=false wasn't successful. See summary of pro and cons in my blog post "Do NOT Change "Copy Local” project references to false, unless understand subsequences."