In order to get round VB 2005's inability to share source files, I have split my applications into a shared component (in a class library) and and 3 projects that will be compiled into three separate applications and which reference the class library.

All three applications use a module that contains a set of public variables, and rather than copy this module into each application, I'd like to share it as well.

So, I put it into the class library, but even with a Public statement on the module and its variables and subroutines, I can't reference it from the main app. IMPORT shows the classes in the class library (which include a couple of forms) but not the module.

If I convert the module to a class, I'll have to change every reference to each one of its variables from "variable" to "instance.variable", and the same for its methods. Is this the only way to do it?

If you have trouble working out what I'm trying to do...
  The first app gets data from the user and saves it on disk
  The second app reads the data in and does something
  The third app reads the data in and does something else
Each needs access to the methods and class structures that store and manage the internal representation of the data.

Sorry but Visual Basic only allows class libraries to expose objects like this. I.e. no plain old variables. (It's one of the big problems with building "traditional" DLLs in VB. In a traditional DLL, you can do this but not in VB.)

I think you can make the variables Shared in the class and then you don't need to make a class instance to use them. If you call the class TheValues, it would look something like this:

    Public Class TheValues
        Shared Value1 As Integer
        ...
    End Class.

Then you can access them as in:

    TheValues.Value1 = 1337

Alternatively you might look into XML serialization. That would let you easily save and restore instances of the class in files and might make it easier for the three programs to read and write the same file. These two examples use serialization:

    http://vb-helper.com/howto_2005_seri...ictionary.html
    http://vb-helper.com/howto_net_drawing_framework.html

Email me if you get stuck on any of it and I can probably help.



Rod
[email protected]
Author of "Visual Basic 2005 Programmer's Reference"
http://www.vb-helper.com/vb_prog_ref.htm

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I've found a way of sharing source files (see IDE topic) so I've abandoned this.