Maintain two C# projects versions-CodePudding

I've got an app that connects to a program. So it's a plugin basically. And the program it attaches to has different versions (2021, 2022, 2023). To use API I have to reference to appropriate .dll file. And these references are the only things that changes. So the source code is the same in all my plugin's versions, but I have to change these references. How can I do that efficiently? Copying code between projects with different dlls attached isn't the best solution I guess... I'm using MS Visual Studio. Is it best to do it with git (how?) or maybe VS itself has some tools to achieve that?

Please help me, Przemek

CodePudding user response：

Visual Studio allows you to create a so-called shared project. It's similar to a library, but it's not compiled on its own: Its source files are considered part of each project that references the shared project.

Your solution structure should look as follows:

Plugin2021
Plugin2022
Plugin2023
SharedProject

Your shared project would contain all the code, your plugin projects would contain only a reference to the corresponding API dll and to the shared project.

CodePudding user response：

So I created different configurations for my project - one or two for every version and then conditionally referenced to needed .dll in .csproj file.

In ItemGroup I have now many of tags like this:

 <Reference Include="autodesk.inventor.interop, Version=26.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d84147f8b4276564, processorArchitecture=MSIL" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release' OR '$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
  <EmbedInteropTypes>False</EmbedInteropTypes>
  <HintPath>C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Autodesk.Inventor.Interop\v4.0_26.0.0.0__d84147f8b4276564\autodesk.inventor.interop.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>

And it seems to work just fine. Some more modifications with TargetPath and I'm good to go! Thanks a lot to everyone for your time.

Przemek