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Combining Multiple .NET Assemblies

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20 Mar 2015CPOL2 min read 55K   515   145   25
Combining multiple .NET assemblies by customizing MSBuild's project file.

Introduction

Whoever searched for a solution to merge multiple assemblies into a single file probably heard of tools like ILMerge, SmartAssembly, etc.
Another known solution is embedding the DLLs as resources (if anyone's interested, here is a nice article that explains this approach: Load DLL From Embedded Resource[^]).

However on few occasions, I noticed an unnecessary use of these approaches.
If we have these assemblies source codes, then we can achieve the combining by importing all the source code files into a single project at compile time.

In this tip, I'll try to explain briefly how to accomplish that.

For demonstration purposes, let's say we have a console application (our main assembly) that references and uses two class libraries (our secondary assemblies) and we want to combine them all into a single file:

When building this solution, we get three assemblies as expected:

Note that MyExecutable's project file (MyExecutable.csproj) is an XML based file and if we inspect its contents, we can find few ItemGroup nodes. These nodes contain child elements that define the build processes inputs. These child elements can refer to application's source files that need to be compiled, or resource files that need to be copied or assemblies that need to be included in the build process (if anyone's interested, you can read more about Visual Studio project files on MSDN MSBuild).

Now let's locate the ItemGroup node that refers to our included assemblies:

XML
<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectReference Include="..\MyLibrary1\MyLibrary1.csproj">
    <Project>{ea53ca82-13d7-4be1-b95a-4d9d7853d46e}</Project>
    <Name>MyLibrary1</Name>
  </ProjectReference>
  <ProjectReference Include="..\MyLibrary2\MyLibrary2.csproj">
    <Project>{c31d21f3-e86a-4581-b4e8-acae6644d19e}</Project>
    <Name>MyLibrary2</Name>
  </ProjectReference>
</ItemGroup>

Here, we will add a condition that will indicate to MSBuild to use these project references when building MyExecutable in Debug mode:

XML
<ItemGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Debug' ">

But for Release mode, we will include all the source code files from both MyLibrary1 and MyLibrary2 to be compiled as well. We will do this by using a wild card ("\**\*.cs") that will include all the CS files in the directory and its subdirectories. The wild card will also include some unwanted source code files (for this case, those are TemporaryGeneratedFile_[guid].cs files in obj folder and AssemblyInfo.cs file in Property folder) so we will have to exclude them:

XML
<ItemGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Release' ">
  <Compile Include="..\MyLibrary1\**\*.cs"
           Exclude="..\MyLibrary1\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs;
                    ..\MyLibrary1\obj\**;
                    ..\MyLibrary1\bin\**">
    <Link>MyLibrary1\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
    <Visible>false</Visible>
  </Compile>
  <Compile Include="..\MyLibrary2\**\*.cs"
           Exclude="..\MyLibrary2\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs;
                    ..\MyLibrary2\obj\**;
                    ..\MyLibrary2\bin\**">
    <Link>MyLibrary2\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)</Link>
    <Visible>false</Visible>
  </Compile>
</ItemGroup>

And that is it, let's save these changes in MyExecutable.csproj file and rebuild the solution in Release mode:

Last thing I would like to emphasize as a sort of troubleshooting advice, because we are literally moving the compilation of all assemblies source files into a single project, that project needs to be able to compile those files. So you need to consider the following:

  • The main assembly needs to have all the references, resources, settings, etc. of the secondary assemblies in order to build successfully.
  • All assemblies need to be written in the same .NET language.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer GemBox Ltd.
Croatia Croatia
I'm a developer at GemBox Software, working on:

  • GemBox.Spreadsheet - Read, write, convert, and print XLSX, XLS, XLSB, CSV, HTML, and ODS spreadsheets from .NET applications.
  • GemBox.Document - Read, write, convert, and print DOCX, DOC, PDF, RTF, HTML, and ODT documents from .NET applications.
  • GemBox.Pdf - Read, write, edit, and print PDF files from .NET applications.
  • GemBox.Presentation - Read, write, convert, and print PPTX, PPT, and PPSX presentations from .NET applications.
  • GemBox.Email - Read, write, and convert MSG, EML, and MHTML email files, or send and receive email messages using POP, IMAP, SMTP, and EWS from .NET applications.
  • GemBox.Imaging - Read, convert, and transform PNG, JPEG, and GIF images from .NET applications.

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionAbout file types in library Pin
leiyangge9-Dec-15 14:26
leiyangge9-Dec-15 14:26 
AnswerRe: About file types in library Pin
Mario Z9-Dec-15 21:14
professionalMario Z9-Dec-15 21:14 
GeneralRe: About file types in library Pin
leiyangge9-Dec-15 21:48
leiyangge9-Dec-15 21:48 
GeneralRe: About file types in library Pin
Mario Z9-Dec-15 22:03
professionalMario Z9-Dec-15 22:03 
QuestionWhat's the use? Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 4:26
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 4:26 
AnswerRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z25-Mar-15 7:27
professionalMario Z25-Mar-15 7:27 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 7:53
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 7:53 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z25-Mar-15 11:45
professionalMario Z25-Mar-15 11:45 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 12:26
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 12:26 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z25-Mar-15 15:30
professionalMario Z25-Mar-15 15:30 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 16:40
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov25-Mar-15 16:40 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z26-Mar-15 7:24
professionalMario Z26-Mar-15 7:24 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov26-Mar-15 9:05
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov26-Mar-15 9:05 
Please don't apologize anymore; we are perfectly good, I hope.
I still hope you will elaborate the approach you started to explain in this article. Will you add the code and more detail to it?
If you are not sure, I can ask you some questions I may have, but if I can wait until you update the article, I'll rather wait. Please respond, what would be better for you.

As to the votes… As far as I can see, it looks like you are knowledgeable and qualified enough, so good voted won't miss you, including those from myself, and maybe on the present article, too, but right not it needs improvements.

—SA
Sergey A Kryukov

GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z27-Mar-15 5:05
professionalMario Z27-Mar-15 5:05 
GeneralNow it's clear, but... Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov27-Mar-15 12:28
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov27-Mar-15 12:28 
GeneralRe: Now it's clear, but... Pin
Mario Z27-Mar-15 23:42
professionalMario Z27-Mar-15 23:42 
GeneralAgain: it won't build Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov28-Mar-15 0:07
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov28-Mar-15 0:07 
GeneralRe: Again: it won't build Pin
Mario Z28-Mar-15 0:17
professionalMario Z28-Mar-15 0:17 
GeneralRe: Again: it won't build Pin
Mario Z31-Mar-15 3:08
professionalMario Z31-Mar-15 3:08 
GeneralRe: Again: it won't build Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 3:44
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 3:44 
GeneralRe: Again: it won't build PinPopular
Mario Z31-Mar-15 3:55
professionalMario Z31-Mar-15 3:55 
GeneralRe: Again: it won't build Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 3:59
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 3:59 
GeneralIt works, failed to reproduce the problem Pin
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 4:20
mvaSergey Alexandrovich Kryukov31-Mar-15 4:20 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
stixoffire7-Jul-15 5:54
stixoffire7-Jul-15 5:54 
GeneralRe: What's the use? Pin
Mario Z7-Jul-15 21:54
professionalMario Z7-Jul-15 21:54 

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