Referencing EXE assemblies in VS.net

The problem, as discussed in the CinDnug use group, was that a VS.net project that contains tests can not reference a project that generates an exe. The only design solution is to make the exe code a one liner that calls a main dll but this has quite an impact on other design decisions.

When you try to add a reference from a dll project to an exe project in VS.net you get a warnings stating that the reference target has to be a dll. You can solve this problem with some judicious editing of your .csproj file.

Editing your .csproj file will show references declared like this

    <Reference

        Name = "ProtoTabBack"

        Project = "{6292AE62-0514-40F7-99C0-C2C181BF9A15}"

        Package = "{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}"

    />

    <Reference

        Name = "TabulatorFront"

        AssemblyName = "TabulatorFront"

        HintPath = "..\TabulatorFront\bin\debug\TabulatorFront.exe"

    />

Note there are two types of declarations here. The first type uses the package project guid that you can find in your .sln file in the following format. The first guid is the Package and the second the Project.

    Project("{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}") = "TabulatorFront",     

            "TabulatorFront\TabulatorFront.csproj",

            "{DD6F402B-1823-489F-AC6C-B9B8FE18391D}"

         ProjectSection(ProjectDependencies) = postProject

        EndProjectSection

    EndProject

Using this "project reference" in your .csproj file results in VS.net flagging the reference with a little yellow triangle and saying that it has to be a .dll file.

However, using the second Reference format and referring to the exe file directly works. I am now able to code to and link my tests with the exe project code, utilize existing test infrastructure to write tests against UI code and keep my test code out of my production deployments.

Thanks James for the suggestion.