References and Assembly questions

[Mrinal]

See the Comments In Line !!!

I have a few basic questions about references and assemblies.

I was under the impression that by adding a reference in a project to
another project within the same solution, the assembly for the
referenced project would be loaded automatically. However, in using
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies it appears, that's not the case.
loads once some call is made to a class within the referenced project
(e.g. instantiating a form from the referenced project). Is this the
case?

What u have seen is perfectly the way it behaves , until and unless first
call is not made , assembly is not loaded , that's what
dynamic loading is all about and it's always one time process , for any
future calls .

Also even for a given MSIL code , only and only when a given method is
called it gets jitted into native code , it doesan't happens at one time for
all the
assembly code .

On a related note, when adding a reference to another project within
the same solution through the "Add Reference" dialog what's the
preferred approach? Does using the "Project" tab create a relatively
dynamic path to the referenced assembly file (.dll) such that it will
be able to find the referenced file regardless of the file structure of
the hosting PC? And conversely, by using the "Browse" button, is a
more static path to the .dll created, which could cause problems down
the road if you rearrange the internal file structure of your solution?
Can anyone give some good advice or rules of thumb for file and
reference organization within a multi-project solution?

I don't think there's any diff. between the two except tha former way of
"Project Tab" is easy for the developer , ultimately for dynamic referencing
it needs
to map to a physical path but one thing u can try :

-- Reference an assembly using project tab , then rebuild that dll project ,
with diff. target directory and delete the original .
-- Now only build the exe referring it and see it creates a diff.

As in case of browse button method -- mapping to a physical folder , i think
above one may fail , let me try it , i will give u exact results .

Finally, I've also noticed that "References Path" in the Project
Properties don't match "Path" for the individual Reference Properties.
What does that impact and how best to sync them so they are the same?

I am not very sure , will post back if i get some relevant answer .

 

[db]

I have a few basic questions about references and assemblies.

I was under the impression that by adding a reference in a project to
another project within the same solution, the assembly for the
referenced project would be loaded automatically. However, in using
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies it appears, that's not the case.

From what I can tell, the assembly for the referenced project only

loads once some call is made to a class within the referenced project
(e.g. instantiating a form from the referenced project). Is this the
case?

On a related note, when adding a reference to another project within
the same solution through the "Add Reference" dialog what's the
preferred approach? Does using the "Project" tab create a relatively
dynamic path to the referenced assembly file (.dll) such that it will
be able to find the referenced file regardless of the file structure of
the hosting PC? And conversely, by using the "Browse" button, is a
more static path to the .dll created, which could cause problems down
the road if you rearrange the internal file structure of your solution?
Can anyone give some good advice or rules of thumb for file and
reference organization within a multi-project solution?

Finally, I've also noticed that "References Path" in the Project
Properties don't match "Path" for the individual Reference Properties.
What does that impact and how best to sync them so they are the same?

Sorry for the lengthy posting. Thanks in advance for any input you can
give.

-Dave

 

[S. Senthil Kumar]

Yes, the CLR does lazy loading, it tries to load assemblies only when
code that refers to a type in that assembly executes.

Adding references to the Projects tab makes sure that when the
referenced assembly is updated, it is automatically copied to the
current project's directory. Adding a binary reference using the Browse
button would require manual copying everytime the referenced assembly
is updated, unless you set Copy Local to false. I'd suggest going with
the Project tab.

Regards
Senthil

 

[db]

Thanks for your input. I understand the dynamic loading process. I
suppose if my app had a huge number of projects in the solution as
opposed to 4, I would see the benefits of only loading each assembly
when needed.

As for references....I deleted all the internal project references,
then went into the Properties dialog for each project and deleted each
"Reference Path". Once that was done, I re-added each reference to
each project using the "Project" tab in the Add Reference dialog. I
then recompiled and the app ran smoothly. What's odd is that there are
now no Reference Paths listed in the Project Properties.

-Dave