Type exposing from "Inner" assemblies

Question

Assume an Assembly called MyApplicationAssembly refers to MyLibraryAssembly.
MyLibraryAssembly refers to MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly.
MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly declares e.g. an enum.
This enum must be available to MyApplicationAssembly, but I do not want to refer to MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly directly from MyApplicationAssembly.

Is there a way to expose the enum as if it is declared in MyLibraryAssembly without copying it into MyLibraryAssembly ?
(Which would reduce maintenance problems etc.)

Answer 1

Hello Eager,

Thanks for using MSDN forums! This is Ji Zhou and I will be working on this issue with you.

As far as I know, if you want to use the enum defined in MyRudimemtartyLibraryAssembly, you have to reference this assembly in the client application project. This is the behavior as a library assembly is supposed to act.

Why do you not want to reference MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly directly from the MyApplicationAssembly? If your design is MyApplicationAssembly should not see MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly's definition, the shared enum should not be put in MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly, but in a common shared library.

Only one exception is that we can use Reflection to get the enums from the MyRudimentaryLibraryAssembly directly without reference it. See reflection sample here,
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/SetEnumWithReflection.aspx


Hope this helps and have a nice day!

 

 

Ji Zhou

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Answer 2

Thanks.

The reason why this would be nice is that the MyRudimemtartyLibraryAssembly is actually an RCW assembly imported from 3'rd part containing this enum.
Therefore I cannot just choose to define the enum in a shared assembly.
Anyway, it is not a big deal for me, just thought that this may be a more or less common need.