Would MEF work for a product?

Question

We have developed a product (Core). We extend and override functioanlity in Core to create bespoke applications (Product).

Product has a reference to Core so it can inherit from the base forms and override the functionality.

Would MEF be n advantage here or is it more for plug-ins?

Thanks,

B

Answer 1

I think that MEF would be an advantage for you. MEF can be for plugins or just for applications that are "composed" at run-time.

In your case, your core could search for Product and instantiate it at runtime. This means that while Product still needs a reference to Core, your application launch point only needs a reference to Core, not to Product. I assume right now that the user has to execute Product.exe, which then calls into Core.dll to start everything up. Using MEF, the user would run Core.exe and it would load contracts from Product.dll. The architecture would be cleaner.