We're building a .NET software platform for test automation for in house use in our company.
The application is composed of a GUI (WinForms) component, and various "Actions" that are dynamically being loaded into it to be executed.
There are approximately ~ 100 Action projects going already, with this number increasing. Some of these projects are interdependent on other projects and so on.
All actions loaded must reference our "SDK" dll for various activities (results to the main app, logging, etc).
With this relatively simple design, we are facing some management decisions that we'd like to solve in the best way:
- Should actions ("plugins") reference our SDKs project output, or some known stable version of it? For example, when developing a large application (MS Office just for the example), not all teams work with source code for all components naturally.
What is the best solution for something like this ? and why?
- How to properly verify that all needed dependencies (3rd party libraries for example) are indeed taken from the correct location ?
What are common practices in scenarios where managing multitude of projects that are linked in between? are there any tips for doing so ?