How do you share external dependencies between Visual Studio solutions?

Question

I have a Java background so I’m used to having Maven handle all problem around downloading and keeping dependencies up to date. But in the .NET environment I have not yet fo

Answer 1

Adding to what everybody else is saying, it basically comes down to two things:

1. Making sure that all developers have the same versions of external libraries
2. Making sure that all developers have the external libraries located in the same place (at least, relative to the source code)

As Richard Berg points out, you can use ReferencePath and/or AdditionalReferencePath to help solve #2. If you're using msbuild in your build process (in our case, we're using CruiseControl instead of MS Team Build), you can also pass ReferencePath to it on the command line. To solve #1, I've found svn:externals to be useful (if you're using SVN).

My experience with Maven is that it's way overkill for most purposes.