Moving and Organizing DLL’s to Make VSTA Integration Easier. Part III: Supporting Projects

Overview:

The main benefit of organizing the add-in DLL’s is reduced programmatic searching for them.  The benefit of organizing supporting DLL’s, like the Proxy and TypeInfrastructureManager, as well as any other projects included in the solution, is similar.  While these DLL’s are generally not searched for like add-ins, they may be needed by the program or tools like ProxyGen and ProjectGen.  The easiest way to organize these is to change the build paths to match the host application’s .exe folder.  This allows you to use the code System.IO.Path.Combine(System.Windows.Forms.Application.StartupPath, "FindThis.dll") to locate the dll’s programmatically. 

Step-by-Step:  How to change the build path of a project in a solution to match the build path of the host application.

1)  Open the solution in Visual Studio 2005.

2)  In the Solution Explorer right click on the project to change.

3)      Select Properties to bring up the Properties page for the project.

4)      Select the Build tab.

5)      Under the Output section, select the Browse button next to the Output path box.

6)      Navigate to the “…\bin\Debug” folder of the host application.

7)      Save the project.