I would like to submit the idea of creating Connected Projects (aka CodePlex Projects :)) to Visual Studio. A Connected Project works much like a regular project. It is a project you can include in your solution and reference from other projects in your solution. The major difference is that it doesn’t include source code (although access to code would be in the same way that the Core .NET libraries are now accessed), and it pulls its compiled assemblies from CodePlex.
Connected Project then becomes a live, dynamic project in my solution, in the sense that whenever a new version of this project is available (beta or otherwise), I can then go into the Properties of this project and update the version that my solution is using. I can also set up my debug configuration to always use latest (Automatic) and my release configuration to always use a specific version, for production purposes.
Breaking changes in the latest nightly build version of the Connected Project? No problem. Just revert to the previous version of the project (this is controlled by a new tab/control in the Remote Project’s Property Pages). No need to muck with code or bug regression.
<a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/michae
ld/archive/2008/02/09/visual-studio
-connected-projects-codeplex-projec
ts.aspx" target="_blank">I've discussed this at length on a blog</a>. I would really love to get some discussion over this (either here or there!)