When you develop a VB project of moderate size, you’ll quickly find that it will consist of multiple components.  This section describes the things you should consider when compiling VB projects. I have tested the things I describe here. However I am not the absolute expert in this area so please, feel free to comment on this article.  I recently split this article into several smaller pieces.  The following table gives you direct access to the related (child) articles, the text in the remaining gives some clues as to what you will find in each article :

[COM for VB] [No Compatibility] [Binary Compatibility] [Binary Compatible Changes] [Binary compatible : how] [Breaking compatibility] [Component Sizes] [Testing] [The Way we Work] [Component Evolution] [Compatibility : FAQ] [Deployment rules] [Deployment : howto] [The way we work now] [AutoUpdate thoughts] [The limits of compatibility]

VB is built on top of COM. If you want to know how that works and what VB does for you : have a quick look here.  In the notes at the bottom you might just learn why there is such a thing as a “type mismatch” in VB.

Compiling in VB is all about binary compatibility. To appreciate what that is, first consider the case with no compatibility.  Then read on and discover the work behind binary compatibility.  Next you can learn which changes are actually binary compatible.  If you really want to know more, you can learn how VB does binary compatibility.  When you work with binary compatible files, check out this list of FAQ.  If you want to know how we structure our compilation, check out the way we work.

If you do binary compatibility correctly, it will buy you independent component evolution.  If you don’t care about binary compatibility, at least learn the rules for breaking binary compatibility.

Once you get everything compiled, you are ready for deploying your application (or a part of it). First learn the rules for deployment, then learn how to deploy.

Related articles :

MSDN : Building, Versioning, and Maintaining Visual Basic Components

Subitems :

[COM for VB]
[No Compatibility]
[Binary Compatibility]
[Binary Compatible Changes]
[Binary compatible : how]
[Breaking compatibility]
[Component Sizes]
[Testing]
[The Way we Work]
[Component Evolution]
[Compatibility : FAQ]
[Deployment rules]
[Deployment : howto]
[The way we work now]
[AutoUpdate thoughts]
[The limits of compatibility]