Building a shared wsp containing references

Question

I have built a wsp with common libraries used by my Sharepoint wsps (e.g. web parts, event recievers, etc).

With this wsp (lets call it "shared wsp"), do I just need to deploy to the GAC and ensure that my other wsps reference DLLs from the gac?

I guess what I ask is the best way to build a common wsp that hosts popular references.

Answer 1

You should deploy your DLLs to GAC, if you are using some external DLLs for your project you should include them in your wsp and add them to GAC also, make sure the manifest.xml file of the solution (inside wsp) has following lines

<Assemblies>
    <Assembly DeploymentTarget="GlobalAssemblyCache" Location="YourProject.dll" />
</Assemblies>

for each external dll there should be one Assembly tag

You dont need to care about other wsp unless your are using reference of another project, in that case I would suggest include that dll for GAC deployment of current project i.e. treat it as external dll and include for GAC deployment

Answer 2

That is correct. You might also want to set up a Feature Dependency in your other projects to ensure that the core solution is active prior to their activation.