hiding classes in a DLL

[Matt Nunnally]

I'm developing a DLL for third party use. I have one class (Main.vb) that I want to expose to the developer. There are several underlying classes that I do not want to expose to the developer, but the main class needs. How do I make sure that those classes are not exposed when they call the dll? I set ComVisible(False) on the classes I don't want to expose, but it still shows up in intellisence and I can access it.

[Plater]

declare the classes inside the main class.

Such as:

public mymainclass
{
   //some constructor
   //some functions
   private class myprivlass1
   {
      //some constructor
      //some functions
   }
}
 

Also, I forget the command, but there's a way to hide functions from the intellisense too.

[Matt Nunnally]

Thanks for the help. I just declared those classes "Friend" and it worked just fine.

Now I have another issue. The class that I do have exposed.......If I reference the compiled DLL (not the DLL source project file) in another project and set a break point to some exposed function that I call. When I step into that function (F8), it actually goes into the source code of the DLL. It should have steped over that function while the DLL performed it. Whats up with that? I don't want the users of this DLL to be able to see the source code of that class.

Is this really going to happen when I deploy that DLL, or is it because I have the source code on the same machine as my sample project?

I have <System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComVisible(False )> set for that public class.

[Plater]

I noticed that on my own programs. It is supposibly based on if your build settings produce debug code.
However, even without debug code it still opened up my source file.

The important thing to remember is that it IS opening up the source file, not re-creating the source. So, no source file, no code for it to open.