Consuming COM Obj In .NET Assembly From Different .NET Assembly

[Bowman, John C.]

Hi All,

I'm fairly new to COM interop w/ .NET and need some help. Assume I have .NET
assembly A.DLL (running under .NET assembly A.EXE) which is registered via
Regasm.exe that exposes a COM object which .NET B.DLL assembly (running
under .NET assembly B.EXE) needs to consume. When I set a reference in (VS
2005) in the project for B.DLL to A.DLL I'm forced to either have A.DLL in
the GAC (unacceptable for other reasons), or a copy of A.DLL must exist in
the installation folder of B.DLL. This is not very desirable either, because
it would mean we need to distribute A.DLL with B.DLL, we'd like to not have
that situation.

I know that if I try to set the reference in the VS project of B.DLL to the
.TLB from A.DLL, that it complains I'm not allowed to do that & I need to
set the reference directly to the A.DLL assembly. Also, I know that if A.DLL
had been a simple unmanaged .DLL exposing the COM object that setting a
reference to it's .TLB in project B causes a simple interop .DLL to be
generated at compile time for distribution - which would be acceptable.

Is there some way (using manifests(s)? / or an interop aseembly of some kind
?) to make this work so we don't have to distribute A.DLL all the time since
it's already installed and running in the system?

TIA,

John

[Bowman, John C.]

Hi All,

Sorry about the double post, my email client crash when I sent it and I
thought it didn't go through...

John

Post by Bowman, John C.
Hi All,
I'm fairly new to COM interop w/ .NET and need some help. Assume I have
.NET assembly A.DLL (running under .NET assembly A.EXE) which is
registered via Regasm.exe that exposes a COM object which .NET B.DLL
assembly (running under .NET assembly B.EXE) needs to consume. When I set
a reference in (VS 2005) in the project for B.DLL to A.DLL I'm forced to
either have A.DLL in the GAC (unacceptable for other reasons), or a copy
of A.DLL must exist in the installation folder of B.DLL. This is not very
desirable either, because it would mean we need to distribute A.DLL with
B.DLL, we'd like to not have that situation.
I know that if I try to set the reference in the VS project of B.DLL to
the .TLB from A.DLL, that it complains I'm not allowed to do that & I need
to set the reference directly to the A.DLL assembly. Also, I know that if
A.DLL had been a simple unmanaged .DLL exposing the COM object that
setting a reference to it's .TLB in project B causes a simple interop .DLL
to be generated at compile time for distribution - which would be
acceptable.
Is there some way (using manifests(s)? / or an interop aseembly of some
kind ?) to make this work so we don't have to distribute A.DLL all the
time since it's already installed and running in the system?
TIA,
John