How do you share code between projects solutions in Visual Studio

Question

I have two solutions which have some common code  so I d like to extract it out and share it between them  Furthermore  I d like to be able to release that library independently because it might be useful to others     What s the best way to do it with Visual Studio 2008   Is a project present in more than one solution   Do I have a separate solution for the separate piece of code   Can a solution depend on another one

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You can include a project in more than one solution  I don t think a project has a concept of which solution it s part of  However  another alternative is to make the first solution build to some well-known place  and reference the compiled binaries  This has the disadvantage that you ll need to do a bit of work if you want to reference different versions based on whether you re building in release or debug configurations   I don t believe you can make one solution actually depend on another  but you can perform your automated builds in an appropriate order via custom scripts  Basically treat your common library as if it were another third party dependency like NUnit etc

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A project can be referenced by multiple solutions   Put your library or core code into one project  then reference that project in both solutions

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One simpler way to include a class file of one project in another projects is by Adding the project in existing solution and then Adding the DLL reference of the new project in the existing project  Finally  you can use the methods of the added class by decalring using directive at the top of the any class

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Two main steps involved are  1- Creating a C   dll  In visual studio   New- gt Project- gt Class Library in c   template  Name of project here is first dll in  visual studio 2010  Now declare your function as public in first dll h file and  write the code in first dll cpp file as shown below    Header File code     first dll h  using namespace System   namespace first dll     public ref class Class1   public      static double sum int  int           TODO  Add your methods for this class here         Cpp File    first dll cpp  include  stdafx h    include  first dll h   namespace first dll        double Class1   sum int x int y                return x y              Check This     Project- gt  Properties - gt  Configuration General - gt  Configuration Type      this option should be Dynamic Library  dll  and build the solution project now   first dll dll file is created in Debug folder  2- Linking it in C  project  Open C  project  Rightclick on project name in solution explorer - gt  Add - gt  References - gt  Browse to path  where first dll dll is created and add the file    Add this line at top in C  project  Using first dll     Now function from dll can be accessed using below statement in some function  double var   Class1 sum 4 5     I created dll in c   project in VS2010 and used it in VS2013 C  project It works well

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You can  link  a code file between two projects   Right click your project  choose Add -  Existing item  and then click the down arrow next to the Add button     In my experience linking is simpler than creating a library   Linked code results in a single executable with a single version

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You could include the same project in more than one solution  but you re guaranteed to run into problems sometime down the road  relative paths can become invalid when you move directories around for example   After years of struggling with this  I finally came up with a workable solution  but it requires you to use Subversion for source control  which is not a bad thing   At the directory level of your solution  add a svn externals property pointing to the projects you want to include in your solution  Subversion will pull the project from the repository and store it in a subfolder  of your solution file  Your solution file can simply use relative paths to refer to your project    If I find some more time  I ll explain this in detail

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Now you can use the Shared Project      Shared Project is a great way of sharing common code across multiple   application  We already have experienced with the Shared Project type   in Visual Studio 2013 as part of Windows 8 1 Universal App   Development  But with Visual Studio 2015  it is a Standalone New   Project Template  and we can use it with other types of app like   Console  Desktop  Phone  Store App etc   This types of project is   extremely helpful when we want to share a common code  logic as well   as components across multiple applications with in single platform    This also allows accessing the platform-specific API    s  assets etc      for more info check this

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You can host an internal NuGet Server and share the common libraries that will be shared in other projects internally and externally   Further on this read

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Extract the common code into a class library project and add that class library project to your solutions  Then you can add a reference to the common code from other projects by adding a project reference to that class library  The advantage of having a project reference as opposed to a binary assembly reference is that if you change your build configuration to debug  release  custom  etc  the common class library project will be built based on that configuration as well

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There is a very good case for using  adding existing file links  when reusing code across projects  and that is when you need to reference and support different versions of dependent libraries    Making multiple assemblies with references to different external assemblies isn t easy to do otherwise without duplicating your code  or utilizing tricks with source code control    I believe that it s easiest to maintain one project for development and unit test  then to create  build  projects using existing file links when you need to create the assemblies which reference different versions of those external assemblies

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File  gt  Add  gt  Existing Project    will let you add projects to your current solution  Just adding this since none of the above posts point that out  This lets you include the same project in multiple solutions

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It is a good idea to create a dll class library that contain all common functionality  Each solution can reference this dll indepently regardless of other solutions   Infact   this is how our sources are organized in my work  and I believe in many other places    By the way   Solution can t explicitly depend on another solution

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If you re attempting to share code between two different project types  I e   desktop project and a mobile project   you may look into the shared solutions folder  I have to do that for my current project as the mobile and desktop projects both require identical classes that are only in 1 file  If you go this route  any of the projects that have the file linked can make changes to it and all of the projects will be rebuilt against those changes

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You would simply create a separate Class Library project to contain the common code  It need not be part of any solution that uses it  Reference the class library from any project that needs it   The only trick at all is that you will need to use a file reference to reference the project  since it will not be part of the solutions that refer to it  This means that the actual output assembly will have to be placed in a location that can be accessed by anyone building a project that references it  This can be done by placing the assembly on a share  for instance

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You can wild-card inline using the following technique  which is the way in which  Andomar s solution is saved in the  csproj    lt Compile Include     MySisterProject      cs  gt     lt Link gt  Inlined MySisterProject   RecursiveDir   Filename   Extension  lt  Link gt   lt  Compile gt    Put in        lt Visible gt false lt  Visible gt    If you want to hide the files and or prevent the wild-card include being expanded if you add or remove an item from a  virtual existing item  folder like MySisterProject above

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As of VisualStudio 2015  if you keep all your code in one solution  you can share code by adding a shared project  Then add a reference to this shared project for each project you want to use the code in  as well as the proper using directives

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