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Asked: 2026-05-28T07:51:21+00:00

I have a requirement to package up and release a .NET control library across

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I have a requirement to package up and release a .NET control library across multiple platforms and have a question on how to automate this deployment (or make as efficient as possible) through build scripts and VS2010 configurations.

The control library is to be released as a Silverlight version (separate builds for SL 3.0, 4.0, 5.0) and WPF version (separate builds for .NET3.5 / .NET4.0). I also need to specify release and trial versions of the same libraries. Trial versions will be differentiated in code with a preprocessor statement TRIAL. Both the trial and full version will be compiled in RELEASE mode.

I’m wondering how to achieve this in the most efficient way possible. My VS2010 solution currently has one project for WPF (.NET 4.0) and one separate project for SL (SL 4.0).

  • Do I need to create further csproj projects for the missing versions, e.g. .NET 3.5 and SL 3.0 and 5.0?
  • I wish to create one MSI for all Silverlight DLLs and one MSI for all WPF dlls. Do I need to create further MSIs for the versions compiled as Trial? What about separate MSIs for each version of the .NET or Silverlight framework?
  • Is it possible to achieve the above deployment packaging using build.targets or build scripts?

Basically if I create manually MSIs for all the above combinations and do a full rebuild that would work, but it is also a laborious process when releasing updates. I am looking for suggestions on how to achieve this with build scripts, build.targets, MSI configurations or a combination of the above.

Finally when redistributing the control libraries, installation should ideally result in registration in the GAC.

Any comments / suggestions welcome.

Best regards,

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    For posterities sake I’m recording the solution I came up with thanks to competent_tech‘s very informative answer.

    Solved using an msdos batch file as follows.

    • Dumped the idea of #If Trial switch. Instead component is licensed by licx file so trial build is the same as release build. This means just one solution for dev work which build outputs are derived from
    • Created a batch file to rebuild Silverlight and WPF output projects with MSBuild, switching toolsversion to create multiple versions
    • Copied DLLs over to Nuget style directory structure, e.g. Build/lib/net40, Build/lib/sl4, Build/lib/sl5 etc…
    • Obfuscate built libs in place
    • XCopy example projects over to Build/examples/
    • Use Powershell to edit example projects to reference new obfuscated output.

    For reference, please see the following questions and answers on removing/re-adding references and editing project files with powershell

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