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There are times when you might want to switch the type of your library between a Windows Runtime Component and (.NET) Class Library. Why would you do that? There are slight differences between these – a WinRT Component can be used by other assemblies written in any language supported by WinRT – your APIs will be projected to these other languages. A Class Library can only (easily) be used by .NET assemblies, but allows you to have class inheritance. Depending on the realization or change of your requirements then you might decide that you need to change the type of the library you have already created, but how do you do that? Easily. Assuming your code is compliant with the above mentioned limitations you just need to change the value of one XML element in your csproj file between <OutputType>winmdobj</OutputType> and <OutputType>Library</OutputType>.

*EDIT

Silly me, how could I have overlooked it? The project properties panel has an option for switching between Class Library, WinRT Component and Windows Store App!

Switching project types between Class Library, Windows Runtime Component and Windows Store App in Visual Studio

I use code snippets extensively. I don’t think it makes sense to do without them if you do any XAML work, though what you use them for is actually the code behind where lots of boilerplate code is necessary. My snippets collection consists mostly of modified Dr WPF’s dependency property snippets and various types of observable property snippets. Today I am working on cleaning up some code in WinRT XAML Toolkit and decided a snippet to disable warnings could be helpful, so here it is (also added to my collection on dropbox). Just use the sw shortcut for this Suppress Warning snippet.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
  <CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
    <Header>
      <SnippetTypes>
        <SnippetType>SurroundsWith</SnippetType>
      </SnippetTypes>
      <Shortcut>sw</Shortcut>
      <Title>Suppress Warning</Title>
      <Description>Surrounds with a #pragma warning disable/restore block.</Description>
      <Author>Filip Skakun</Author>
      <HelpUrl>http://xyzzer.wordpress.com</HelpUrl>
    </Header>
    <Snippet>
      <Declarations>
        <Literal>
          <ID>warninglist</ID>
          <ToolTip>Comma separated warning list.</ToolTip>
          <Default>4014</Default>
        </Literal>
      </Declarations>
      <Code Language="csharp">
        <![CDATA[#pragma warning disable $warninglist$
$selected$$end$
#pragma warning restore $warninglist$]]>
      </Code>
    </Snippet>
  </CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>