Compiling Visual Basic, C# & F# Code Into A Single DLL Using msbuild

Recently I had a requirement in which a C# file had to be included in a VB.Net project. I knew I couldn’t add the file directly to the project, so I cut over the C# file to VB.Net. At first this seemed pretty obvious since Visual Studio maps every project to a programming language and uses an appropriate compiler to compile the files in the project.

But giving it a deeper thought, I felt something didn’t fit the picture. Every project, rather every file that we compile using the .NET Framework generates Common Intermediate Language which is used by the Common Language Runtime. It is because of this CIL that we have language interoperability in .NET. So theoretically speaking, code written in different languages should be able to exist in a single assembly.

Though I couldn’t find a way to directly add a C# file into a VB.Net project, I found a way to create a DLL from compiled VB.Net and C# code through a concept of the .NET framework called Multi Module Assemblies.

Windows Phone 7 - Hello World!

Ever since Nokia announced its partnership with Microsoft and made Windows Phone 7 its primary smartphone operating system, I anxiously wanted to give it a spin. So in this post, I am going to start by setting up a development environment for Windows Phone 7 followed by a simple Hello World example.

Windows Phone 7 is primarily a successor of the Windows Mobile Platform (the last one in the line being Windows Mobile 6.5). It’s a major revamp in Microsoft’s Mobile strategy in terms of its application development model.