How do I coordinate assembly version information in my tree of many C# projects?

Question

What approaches have you taken to coordinating changes to version and Copyright for groups of assemblies?

I have a tree of many csprojs each with its own AssemblyInfo file. As part of my build process I want to set copyright year and version. It looks like the following options be be available but file modification is the only one I've seen thus far:

• Modify all files via script
• Include resource with date (a macro, a singleton class with public static variables)
• Override AssemblyVersion on command line ( -DAssemblyVersion="1.0.0.1" ?)
• Reference Environment variable ([assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("${ENV.VERSION")])

I'm used to keeping the source tree clean of generated files in Java/C++ via command line params, defines and centralizing all version specification in a single file.

What approach to do you use to keep the versions in sync and manageable?

Thanks

Peter

Answer 1

In the top folder, I place a CommonAssemblyInfo.cs that contains the ... common stuff, such as copyright and FileVersion. This file is just contains some default attributes and is regenerated by a script(a simple .bat file) on the build server, Hudson in my case. Remove these common attributes in each of the projects AssemblyInfo.cs.

In each project in the solution, I add this file. but use "Add as link" - available in the drop down of the "Add" button when you add an existing file. i.e. all projects just contains a reference to the same file, so there's only one file to update.