For migration projects (.gmproj files) containing multiple legacy projects (.vbp files), the initial translation cycles produce .NET projects (.csproj or .vbproj files) that will not reference each other or any other external assemblies besides .NET Framework assemblies. We call these stand-alone, prototype translations. They can be built completely independently and they are useful for upgrade assessment, code review, and initial build work, but they cannot run. In order to make them run, we need to reconfigure the upgrade solution to produce an integrated build, wherein the generated projects depend on each other and must be built from the bottom up, dependencies first.
There are three types of challenges facing us as we do this for a multi-project system.
- .NET Assembly References
- Build Cycles
- Shared Files
A productive discussion of these problems and their solutions is beyond the scope of this document -- they require a fair amount of analysis and configuration of the translation scripts to produce a satisfactory solution.