What is the difference between a Shared Project and a Class Library in Visual Studio 2015

Question

I was looking at the new features for Visual Studio 2015 and Shared Project came up a lot but I don t understand how it is different to using a Class Library or a Portable Class Library  Can anyone explain    Edit  Shared Project is a new feature in Visual Studio 2015 and is different to a Portable Class Library  I understand what a Portable Class Library is  What I m trying to understand is how a Shared Project differs to a Class Library  See link below    http   www c-sharpcorner com UploadFile 7ca517 shared-project-an-impressive-features-of-visual-studio-201

User · Answer

Like others already wrote  in short   shared project reuse on the code  file  level  allowing for folder structure and resources as well  pcl reuse on the assembly level  What was mostly missing from answers here for me is the info on reduced functionality available in a PCL  as an example you have limited file operations  I was missing a lot of File IO fuctionality in a Xamarin cross-platform project    In more detail shared project    Can use  if when targeting multiple platforms  e  g  Xamarin iOS  Android  WinPhone    All framework functionality available for each target project  though has to be conditionally compiled  o Integrates at compile time - Slightly larger size of resulting assemblies - Needs Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 or higher  pcl    generates a shared assembly   usable with older versions of Visual Studio  pre-2013 Update 2  o dynamically linked - lmited functionality  subset of all projects it is being referenced by   If you have the choice  I would recommend going for shared project  it is generally more flexible and more powerful  If you know your requirements in advance and a PCL can fulfill them  you might go that route as well  PCL also enforces clearer separation by not allowing you to write platform-specific code  which might not be a good choice to be put into a shared assembly in the first place    Main focus of both is when you target multiple platforms  else you would normally use just an ordinary library dll project

User · Answer

Class library is shared compiled code   Shared project is shared source code

User · Answer

The difference between a shared project and a class library is that the latter is compiled and the unit of reuse is the assembly   Whereas with the former  the unit of reuse is the source code  and the shared code is incorporated into each assembly that references the shared project   This can be useful when you want to create separate assemblies that target specific platforms but still have code that should be shared   See also here      The shared project reference shows up under the References node in the Solution Explorer  but the code and assets in the shared project are treated as if they were files linked into the main project      In previous versions of Visual Studio1  you could share source code between projects by Add -  Existing Item and then choosing to Link  But this was kind of clunky and each separate source file had to be selected individually  With the move to supporting multiple disparate platforms  iOS  Android  etc   they decided to make it easier to share source between projects by adding the concept of Shared Projects     1 This question and my answer  up until now  suggest that Shared Projects was a new feature in Visual Studio 2015  In fact  they made their debut in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2

User · Answer

I found some more information from this blog    In a Class Library  when code is compiled  assemblies  dlls  are generated for each library  But with Shared Project it will not contain any header information so when you have a Shared Project reference it will be compiled as part of the parent application  There will not be separate dlls created  In class library you are only allowed to write C  code while shared project can have any thing like C  code files  XAML files or JavaScript files etc

User · Answer

In-Short Differences are   1  PCL is not going to have Full Access to  NET Framework   where as SharedProject has   2   ifdef for platform specific code - you can not write in PCL   ifdef option isn   t available to you in a PCL because it   s compiled separately  as its own DLL  so at compile time  when the  ifdef is evaluated  it doesn   t know what platform it will be part of    where as Shared project you can   3  Platform specific code is achieved using Inversion Of Control in PCL   where as using  ifdef statements you can achieve the same in Shared Project   An excellent article which illustrates differences between PCL vs Shared Project can be found at the following link  http   hotkrossbits com 2015 05 03 xamarin-forms-pcl-vs-shared-project

User · Answer

From the book VS 2015 succintly  Shared Projects allows sharing code  assets  and resources across multiple project types  More specifically  the following project types can reference and consume shared projects    Console  Windows Forms  and Windows Presentation Foundation  Windows Store 8 1 apps and Windows Phone 8 1 apps  Windows Phone 8 0 8 1 Silverlight apps  Portable Class Libraries    Note - Both shared projects and portable class libraries  PCL  allow sharing code  XAML resources  and assets  but of course there are some differences that might be summarized as follows       A shared project does not produce a reusable assembly  so it can only be consumed from within the solution     A shared project has support for platform-specific code  because it supports environment variables such as WINDOWS PHONE APP and WINDOWS APP that you can use to detect which platform your code is running on     Finally  shared projects cannot have dependencies on third-party libraries     By comparison  a PCL produces a reusable  dll library and can have dependencies on third-party libraries  but it does not support platform environment variables

[c#] What is the difference between a Shared Project and a Class Library in Visual Studio 2015?

Examples related to c#

Examples related to .net

Examples related to visual-studio-2015