I have a solution with multiple project. I am trying to optimize AssemblyInfo.cs files by linking one solution wide assembly info file. What are the best practices for doing this? Which attributes should be in solution wide file and which are project/assembly specific?
Edit: If you are interested there is a follow up question What are differences between AssemblyVersion, AssemblyFileVersion and AssemblyInformationalVersion?
Using a single AseemblyInfo.cs file for multiple projects is not recommended.
The AssemblyInfo file includes information that might be relevant only for that specific assembly. The two most obvious pieces of information are the AssemblyTitle and AssemblyVersion.
A better solution might be to use targets file, which are handled by the MSBuild, in order to "inject" assembly attributes to more than one project.
We're using a global file called GlobalAssemblyInfo.cs and a local one called AssemblyInfo.cs. The global file contains the following attributes:
[assembly: AssemblyProduct("Your Product Name")] [assembly: AssemblyCompany("Your Company")] [assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright © 2008 ...")] [assembly: AssemblyTrademark("Your Trademark - if applicable")] #if DEBUG [assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("Debug")] #else [assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("Release")] #endif [assembly: AssemblyVersion("This is set by build process")] [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("This is set by build process")]
The local AssemblyInfo.cs contains the following attributes:
[assembly: AssemblyTitle("Your assembly title")] [assembly: AssemblyDescription("Your assembly description")] [assembly: AssemblyCulture("The culture - if not neutral")] [assembly: ComVisible(true/false)] // unique id per assembly [assembly: Guid("xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx")]
You can add the GlobalAssemblyInfo.cs using the following procedure:
In my case, we're building a product for which we have a Visual Studio solution, with various components in their own projects. The common attributes go. In the solution, there are about 35 projects, and a common assembly info (CommonAssemblyInfo.cs), which has the following attributes:
[assembly: AssemblyCompany("Company")]
[assembly: AssemblyProduct("Product Name")]
[assembly: AssemblyCopyright("Copyright © 2007 Company")]
[assembly: AssemblyTrademark("Company")]
//This shows up as Product Version in Windows Explorer
//We make this the same for all files in a particular product version. And increment it globally for all projects.
//We then use this as the Product Version in installers as well (for example built using Wix).
[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion("0.9.2.0")]
The other attributes such as AssemblyTitle, AssemblyVersion etc, we supply on a per-assembly basis. When building an assembly both AssemblyInfo.cs and CommonAssemblyInfo.cs are built into each assembly. This gives us the best of both worlds where you may want to have some common attributes for all projects and specific values for some others.
Hope that helps.
MSBuild Community Tasks contains a custom task called AssemblyInfo which you can use to generate your assemblyinfo.cs. It requires a little hand-editing of your csproj files to use, but is worthwhile.
The solution presented by @JRoppert is almost the same as what I do. The only difference is that I put the following lines in the local AssemblyInfo.cs file as they can vary with each assembly:
#if DEBUG
[assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("Debug")]
#else
[assembly: AssemblyConfiguration("Release")]
#endif
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("This is set by build process")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("This is set by build process")]
[assembly: CLSCompliant(true)]
I also (generally) use one common assembly info per solution, with the assumption that one solution is a single product line/releasable product. The common assembly info file also has:
[assembly: AssemblyInformationalVersion("0.9.2.0")]
Which will set the "ProductVersion" value displayed by Windows Explorer.