SynologyDotNet

Solution for local development using project references instead of NuGet packages to help debugging. This repository used internally to develop my SynologyDotNet packages.

Overview

My client implementations are referencing the synologydotnet-core package, which provides a small framework to send requests to the Synology API, and also handles authentication.

Logical hierarchy:

synologydotnet-core
│
├── synologydotnet-filestation
│
├── synologydotnet-audiostation
│   │
│   └── synologydotnet-audiostation-wpf
│
└── ...

The (NuGet) Package Reference vs Project Reference dilemma

Debugging a NuGet package is tricky. I have the source code for my solutions, so I could just add project references, right? But after I finished my development, I'd like to release a package... Then I got to remove the project references and re-add the NuGet packages references. Next time, repat from the beginning...

The goal of this repository is to provide simple and easy-to-maintain solution to this problem:

Use project references only when I develop locally
No duplicated .csproj files
Do not break the build in the individual repository for the default Debug and Release configs.

The last point is important. I want to be able to just clone one single repository which loads the NuGet packages by default and I can just hit F5 in Debug mode.

Local configuration

This solution file has a Local configuration apart from Debug and Release. This exists only here, no other solution file contains this entry. But the project files do.

Project file magic

I use a project file with both the NuGet package reference and the project reference.
The project file literally contains a switch .. case statement to setup the project by the selected configuration.
Here is a snippet from my synologydotnet-audiostation repository:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    
    <Choose>
        <When Condition=" '$(Configuration)'=='Local' ">
            <PropertyGroup>
                <DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE</DefineConstants>
            </PropertyGroup>
            <ItemGroup>
                <ProjectReference Include="..\..\synologydotnet-core\SynologyDotNet.Core\SynologyDotNet.Core.csproj" />
            </ItemGroup>
        </When>
        <Otherwise>
            <ItemGroup>
                <PackageReference Include="SynologyDotNet.Core" Version="0.3.0" />
            </ItemGroup>
        </Otherwise>
    </Choose>
    
</Project>

So this little snippet switches the project to project referenes if I set the configuration to Local.
Otherwise everything defaults to packages references.
The beautiful in this solution is that the Local entry exists only in this "master" solution file, so I do not disturb the build inside the individual repositories. They simply won't switch to Local, because their own solution file does not include the Local setting.

How to use