Visual Studio 2010 Conditional References

visual studio 2010 conditional references

You should be able to do this with conditional constructs by editing the project file directly (VS IDE won't do this for you).

For example, you might do something like this using the "Choose" element:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" >
    <PropertyGroup>
        <!-- ... --> 
    </PropertyGroup>
    <Choose>

        <When Condition=" '$(Configuration)'=='Debug' ">
            <ItemGroup>
                <ProjectReference Include="..\stuff\MyStuff.csproj">
                    <Project>{4c7bbe47-8d84-45d4-95f0-f640ba59563c}</Project>
                    <Name>MyStuff</Name>
                </ProjectReference>
            </ItemGroup>
        </When>

        <When Condition=" '$(Configuration)'=='Retail' ">
            <ItemGroup>
                <Reference Include="MyStuff.dll" />
            </ItemGroup>
        </When>

    </Choose>
    <!-- Rest of Project -->
</Project>

MSDN has more information about using conditional constructs.

Visual Studio conditional project reference based on a constant

I suspect the problem is that you are conditioning a project reference to Module1, not whether to include Module1 in the solution.

Including a project in a solution (and hence loading it with the solution) and a project referencing another project in a solution are two different things of course.

UPDATE:

If you truly want to condition a project reference, Joe Wrobel wrote a related blog post that should help. The key takeaway is to wrap the ItemGroup that contains the ProjectReference to condition in a Choose element - for example:

<Choose>
  <When Condition="$(DefineConstants.Contains('SAMPLECONSTANT1'))">
    <ItemGroup>
      <ProjectReference Include="..\Solution1.Modules.Module1\Solution1.Modules.Module1.csproj">
        <Project>{4E378BD0-4FF8-4160-9331-1ECBFD2B6F30}</Project>
        <Name>Solution1.Modules.Module1</Name>
      </ProjectReference>
      <!-- other ProjectReference elements -->
    </ItemGroup>
  </When>
  <Otherwise>
    <ItemGroup>
      <!-- other ProjectReference elements -->
    </ItemGroup>
  </Otherwise>
</Choose>

From my tests this evening, this works great to condition a project reference(s) on whether a constant like SAMPLECONSTANT1 is defined. However, note that conditioned project references do not show in Solution Explorer under the (would-be) referencing project's References folder - regardless whether the conditioning constant is defined.

To see that the conditioning worked, I had to build: with SAMPLECONSTANT1 defined, the referencing project built successfully while using a class defined in Module1 - as expected; and without SAMPLECONSTANT1 defined, the referencing project failed to build because the class defined in Module1 could not be resolved - also as expected.

conditional references in visual studio - how to define the customized variable

I'm not completely sure if there is a way to do that in Visual studio.
If you are running the build from msbuild directly you can use /P:ReleaseType=INTERNAL_RELEASE.

In my project I ended up changing Configuration property and instead of having it as Debug and Release I have more values like , DEV,QA,STAGE, etc...

Conditional Reference

Not sure whether I understand term "reference a class".

You can do a conditional referencing of an entire Assembly (DLL)

<Reference 
        Include="LegacyServices.dll" 
        Condition="$(AppVersion == '2.0')" />

or conditionally include a source file into a project

<Compile 
       Include="LegacyServices.cs" 
       Condition="$(AppVersion == '2.0')" />

Both using MSBuild Condition in csproj file.

How do I execute a line conditionally in Visual Studio 2010?

Do you mean when a debugger is attached? If so, you could do something like this:

#if DEBUG
if (Debugger.IsAttached)
{
    //Your code here
}
#endif

This will only run when the debugger is attached, such as running with F5. Double clicking it or using Ctrl+F5 won't cause the if statement to be hit. It's also wrapped in a conditional so then when you compile to release the code is not even there.

Visual Studio 2010 Compiling with the Debug or Release version of third party library depending on if my project is being compiled Build or Release?

You can edit the csproj file manually set the Condition attribute on the ItemGroup containing the reference.

  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
    <Reference Include="MyLib">
      <HintPath>..\..\Debug\MyLib.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>
  </ItemGroup>

  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'">
    <Reference Include="MyLib">
      <HintPath>..\..\Release\MyLib.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>
  </ItemGroup>

See this article for a bit more information.

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