Application Development

Abstract

This chapter covers some of the fundamental activities you will need to perform when developing your Visual Basic .NET (VB .NET) solutions. The recipes in this chapter describe how to do the following:

• Use the VB .NET command-line compiler to build console and Windows Forms applications (recipes 1-1 and 1-2)

• Create and use code modules and libraries (recipes 1-3 and 1-4)

• Access command-line arguments from within your applications (recipe 1-5)

• Use compiler directives and attributes to selectively include code at build time (recipe 1-6)

• Access program elements built in other languages whose names conflict with VB .NET keywords (recipe 1-7)

• Give assemblies strong names and verify strong-named assemblies (recipes 1-8,1-9,1-10, and 1-11)

• Sign an assembly with a Microsoft Authenticode digital signature (recipes 1-12 and 1-13)

• Manage the shared assemblies that are stored in the global assembly cache (recipe 1-14)

• Make your assembly more difficult to decompile (recipe 1-15)

• Manipulate the appearance of the console (recipe 1-16)

• Compile and embed a string resource file (recipe 1-17)