Embedding C# libraries as source code

pupsette — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 21:45:25 +0000

Hi,
I stumbled upon conflicting dll dependencies several times now, and I was wondering how often others do experience the following case:

There is .NET Lib 'A' (e.g.: well-known JSON.Net)
There is .NET Lib 'B' using Lib 'A' (e.g.: Configuration Manager)
There is .NET App 'C' using Lib 'A' and Lib 'B'

The problem arises, when the used versions of Lib 'A' differ for Lib 'B' and the application in an incompatible way.

There are ways to have two different versions of the same .NET library around, but I did not find this to be convenient/safe.

My proposal for those problems: Why not share Lib 'A' as source code? Different versions of the source code would be compiled directly into Lib 'B' and the application.

I did that for my project and wrote a compact JSON serializer. Nuget allows packaging sources, which are added to your C# project conveniently.

I think, this is a nice and clean solution. But still I haven't found many others complaining about conflicting dll dependencies as much as I do. Also, I did not see C# source code packages in general to become very popular. I was wondering, if I missed the down-side.

So, I'm interested in your thoughts. Thanks!

DEV Community: pupsette

Embedding C# libraries as source code