Implementing custom exceptions in a Portable Class Library

Question

When designing custom exceptions for .NET, MSDN provides these guidelines. In particular, the guidelines state that a custom exception:

• should be serializable, i.e. implement ISerializable and be decorated with the [Serializable] attribute, and
• should implement the (de)serialization constructor, i.e. protected CustomException(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context).

However, in a Portable Class Library neither of SerializableAttribute, ISerializable and SerializationInfo are supported.

How should I sufficiently design a custom exception in a Portable Class Library that simultaneously targets .NET Framework and one or more platforms?

Answer 1

Basically, ignore that guidance - that is for full .NET, and does not apply to portable class library projects. Indeed, if we look at (say) Silverlight (which includes WP7) we see:

[ClassInterfaceAttribute(ClassInterfaceType.None)]
[ComVisibleAttribute(true)]
public class Exception

Frankly, the main consumer of that requirement was remoting... and that is not in huge demand now.