Where do you keep common reference files for multiple Silverlight projects?

I would like to know what are the industry standards or suggestion on how are you doing at your end for following situation.

I am creating multiple silverlight projects which get publised at different dates. All these projects uses varios shared code (common dlls). These shared code would be used in client side or server side. My question is, if the shared code changes would you recompile all the afftected project and release or recompile only when you are making change to the actual code which uses the shared component?

For now, client side, we create a assembly reference folder in each silverlight project and put the latest required dlls in it. By doing it, it has all required files in the XAP itself and it will not conflict with other projects and it works fine. With this approach I will not rebuild any other client side code just because common dll changed. If the common dll change is 开发者_运维知识库required for multiple projects then drop the latest copy in all affected projects and build them and distribute them.

On the other hand, the server side (Domain Services using EF), all the service code sit under bin folder of the web site. So if i would make a change to a common dll, then not only I need to publish the latest common dll for current project to work, but also recompile all the other services to use the new dll.

Would like to know your opinions and suggestions. Thanks

There are two approaches possible:

• Add Common Code to the solution and have a project reference
• Get the build process to build to a folder and reference from there

I prefer first option. I always build and debug using the latest code and do not have to worry about stale references. I have used the second approach in the past and it is messy and can waste your team's time going after debugging bugs that do not exist (old version referenced). In fact I remember Visual Studio sometimes would not get a later version when it was available.

Another alternative for your Silverlight projects would be to use MEF to dynamically download a XAP file containing the common libraries. Then if the common libraries change, you could publish an updated "CommonLibraries.xap", and your Silverlight clients can pick up the refresh independently of the rest of the Silverlight application.

You could follow the same approach with other projects that use these common libraries. The applications could dynamically load the common libraries so that the common libraries can be refreshed independently.

If possible, consider consuming the "common library" code via WCF services.