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Asked: 2026-05-10T20:31:11+00:00

I’ve got a question about references between projects in a solution. Most of my

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I’ve got a question about references between projects in a solution. Most of my previous applications have just had one or two projects in the Solution, but this time I want to divide the application further.

I’m starting a new Solution in Visual Studio 2008 now, and have created several underlying projects to divide the separate parts of my application.

But currently I’m just creating the different projects on a whim, and creating references between them when I need to. Sometimes I end up in a situation where two projects need to reference eachother, but that is not allowed since it would cause a circular dependency.

Are there any rules/tips/patterns I should keep in mind when I create the different projects, and linking them together?

Should I start from the inside, and go out? Having the ‘core’ projects refrence all the outerlying projects, or perhaps go from the outside and in where the independent projects all reference the ‘core’? Or the third option where I have business in two projects, and they both reference a third project?

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  1. Indeed you can’t have circular references, but to be honest what would be the benefit of splitting the solution into small project if you had interdependencies between all of them?

    Usually before I even open Visual Studio I take a piece of paper and split my problem into logical functional areas. You can draw a Utilities assembly at the top and all the GUI’s, web services and other end projects at the bottom. The Utilities project is not going to reference any other project, and the ones at the bottom will not be referenced by anything. Then you think what functionality is common for these, e.g. all GUI’s can share a common UI project with common user controls and dialogs, and this UI project will reference the ‘object model’ project, etc. The project at the bottom can only reference what is above them.

    Often when it appears that you need a circular reference, you can nicely get round it by defining an interface in the lower level assembly, and providing implementation in the upper level.

    Without knowing what are you exactly doing I am afraid that’s the only advice I can give you.

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