Project reference in one .sln, and assembly reference in another

Question

Scenario

This is the distillation of the problem we are having...

1. We have two solution files. Both have a project reference to the same project, ProjA
2. ProjA has a reference to ProjX

Problem

We would like the ProjX reference to be a project reference in SolutionOne, but an assembly reference in SolutionTwo

How can this be done, since ProjA.csproj is the same file referenced by both solutions?

Answer 1

I've never done this before but this sounds like a conditional build. You'd need to define new solution configurations - instead of Debug/Release, you'd call them ProjRef and AsmRef. SolutionOne would build using ProjRef and SolutionTwo would build using AsmRef. Then, you'd modify your vbproj/csproj and tag the reference with the Condition.

Take a look at this article:

http://weblogs.asp.net/lkempe/archive/2009/12/02/projectreference-with-condition-in-your-msbuild-project-files.aspx