So,
We have a series of common assemblies which are not designed for everyday modification. They are however, primary dependencies of all our daily software, which means nearly everything we produce references these assemblies.
Now, a frustration that has always irked me is that in order to get the full power of the design time navigation of Visual Studio, the assembly must be referenced within the solution itself. You can add a reference from anywhere, but if you add the assembly from ANY other location than "Solution", the F12 (Goto Definition) command takes you to a "metatdata" decompiled version of the source. Even when the project is in the current solution!
If we have the Application project reference the common assembly project directly, this could cause a recompile and we want to avoid that.
So, I want to GLOBALLY CONFIGURE visual studio to do the following:
- I have folder with Common projects. This is where all the source exists. C:\Source\Common\[Assembly Project]\
- I have a folder with the compiled Assemblies, pdbs, and xml documentation file. C:\Source\SharedDLLs\Debug
I want visual studio to know that when I am referencing the assembly, (via the browse to, with copy local false):
- F12 Goto Definition will find the appropriate source code file as if the project were added to the solution
- Debugging step into will also access the source files from these assemblies.
Now, I know it is possible to set this up, because I've seen it done with other third party tools. (Like DevExpress), which when installed you can step into their source, as well as F12 to it as well. I am trying to figure out how to configure our own common Assemblies to behave the same.
We are currently using Visual Studio 2013, on Windows 7 machines, with .Net 4.5.1
Thanks
Jaeden "Sifo Dyas" al'Raec Ruiner
"Never Trust a computer. Your brain is smarter than any micro-chip."
PS - Don't mark answers on other people's questions. There are such things as Vacations and Holidays which may reduce timely activity, and until the person asking the question can test your answer, it is not correct just because you think it is. Marking it
correct for them often stops other people from even reading the question and possibly providing the real "correct" answer.