I have a Windows Application that has been ported from VB6 to VB.NET using VS
2003. The code conversion was painful but almost complete. But, now I am
having trouble because the original application had so many different DLL
files associated with it. The application itself is designed to be
configurable on what DLLs it uses because it needs to fit into multiple
different HW and SW environments. So, DLLs are loaded dynamically using
Activator.Creat eInstance and using an XML definition file of the
classes/libraries to load. (Used to use CreateObject under COM and VB6).
When I deploy the application I use private assemblies and copy them all to
the root directory where the application is installed and everything works
fine. My problem is when I want to debug or test the application I can't
just load all of the DLLs into a single solution and build/debug. (There are
over 90 project files!). Right now I am batch building using the command
line each project file and directing the output to a single directory where I
can run from. But this has some severe drawbacks:
1) If someone accidently performs a Rebuild on any single project it will
delete all of the existing DLLs in the target directory.
2) If someone removes a reference from a project, the IDE automatically
removes all of the DLL files associated with that reference as well.
3) Since I try to build all projects to the same directory I have to
remember to set all references to my DLLs to set CopyLocal = False.
The IDE seems to be working against me! Does anyone know of a better way
to work with this large number of projects?
Thx,
John
2003. The code conversion was painful but almost complete. But, now I am
having trouble because the original application had so many different DLL
files associated with it. The application itself is designed to be
configurable on what DLLs it uses because it needs to fit into multiple
different HW and SW environments. So, DLLs are loaded dynamically using
Activator.Creat eInstance and using an XML definition file of the
classes/libraries to load. (Used to use CreateObject under COM and VB6).
When I deploy the application I use private assemblies and copy them all to
the root directory where the application is installed and everything works
fine. My problem is when I want to debug or test the application I can't
just load all of the DLLs into a single solution and build/debug. (There are
over 90 project files!). Right now I am batch building using the command
line each project file and directing the output to a single directory where I
can run from. But this has some severe drawbacks:
1) If someone accidently performs a Rebuild on any single project it will
delete all of the existing DLLs in the target directory.
2) If someone removes a reference from a project, the IDE automatically
removes all of the DLL files associated with that reference as well.
3) Since I try to build all projects to the same directory I have to
remember to set all references to my DLLs to set CopyLocal = False.
The IDE seems to be working against me! Does anyone know of a better way
to work with this large number of projects?
Thx,
John