Two projects in one solution

[Brian Shannon]

I am playing around with building my own classes for use in multiple
projects. Some of my post I have made respondents suggested including my
project that creates a class with the main project. If anyone understands
what I am talking about can you expand on the benefits of this or why one
does that?

Or can someone point my in a spot to read more on multiple projects in a
solution?

Thanks

 

[Scott M.]

If you are building classes that will be re-used again and again in various
projects, you are probably better off building and compiling those classes
into their own assembly and then just referencing that assembly from the
projects that use those classes.

 

[Tom Dacon]

The greatest value for me of having multiple projects in one solution is the
ease of debugging as you step in and out of the classes in the library
projects. I ordinarily create a library assembly containing classes that I
expect to use among multiple projects, and then create a Windows Forms
application as a testbed. The testbed solution contains the testbed
application and also the project containing the library classes. Stepping
through the code during debugging is easy since they're all running in the
same copy of the IDE.

Also, when you're using the library classes in a real application, it's
sometimes convenient to include the library project with the application
solution so that you can do more easily make enhancements or fixes in the
library classes. Often I'll find that it's useful to add an overloaded
constructor that I hadn't thought of, or I'll discover that the using code
in the application would be cleaner if I adjusted the library class
interfaces a little. It's really easy to do this if they're all together in
the same solution.

Tom Dacon
Dacon Software Consulting