C# Creating a assembly for future reference

Question

Hello all,

I'm trying to rebuild zlib.net and create an assembly I can reference in future projects in Visual Studio.

However, after building from the supplied source code and moving the resulting zlib.net.dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies, while I can indeed add the zlib.net reference to a new project, I do not have any access to the underlying objects.

I believe I'm missing some important configuration(s) in the zlib.net.dll project settings file so I can generate an assembly that can be referenced at design time by other projects. I'm just not sure which.

Could you please help?

UPDATE:
Note that I'm testing the resulting assembly by using zlib.net (link above) own supplied demos. When I use the supplied zlib.net.dll all works fine. When I use the one I build from source, it fails.

Answer 1

What do you mean, you have no access to underlying objects ? Do you mean that you cannot instantiate objects from classes that you have defined in that assembly ?

If so, are you sure that those classes are 'public' (have the public access modifier) ? It is possible that VS.NET doesn't add an access specifier to your class definition when you add a new class, hence the default access specifier will be used. In this case, that means the 'internal' access specifier is used. (Classes are internal by default). Then, this could explain why you cannot instantiate objects from those classes, since, 'internal' classes (or methods, or whatever), are only visible within the assembly in which they've been declared.

Solution: specify the 'public' access modifier on the classes that you want to be 'visible' outside that assembly.

Answer 2

You shouldn't ever need to add something to the PublicAssemblies folder.

Place the assembly somewhere in your development folder hierarchy (perhaps C:\dev\Reference\zlib.net\zlib.net.dll). When you want to add a reference, click Browse and locate the assembly in your dev folders. Then click the reference in Solution Explorer and bring up the Properties pane. Make sure Copy Local is set to true.

If you have your solutions in source control, you'll want to copy the DLL to the current solution hierarchy and reference it from there - you don't want to force everyone to have some specific non-source-control folder to build a source controlled project.

Answer 3

Frederik's suggestion is the first thing I'd check. You can't access classes or class members which are non-public in an external assembly.

If they are set to public already, make sure you have proper using statements for the namespaces of the classes you want to access. So if you want to access ZLib.SomeNameSpace.Archive class, ensure you either reference it by the full name, or by adding

using ZLib.SomeNameSpace;

to the code file first. Then you should be able to access the class, such as:

Archive myArchive = new Archive();

Answer 4

Assuming that all your classes are indeed public, have you signed your assembly and added it to the GAC?

There are a few steps to go through, here is a short tutorial. There are a few niggly details but the example I link to should get you up and going.