Reusing VB.NET source file

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And the answer is....

On the open button in add exiisting click the drop down next to the open button. Take the "link file" option. Bingo. No copy local.

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Create another project with the file in it, then include that project in both of your solutions and add references to it.

Learn about namespaces as well - they will be immensely useful here.

I know that. But that wasn't the question.

What I am trying to achieve is to physically embed some text into an assembly (many in fact) so that an external tool (not unlike grep) will find it. The text is in fact a global version number.

Yes I nkow this is a crap method but it nevertheless is required.

So what I want is one copy of version.vb somewhere which is included in all the assemblys. Unhelpfully add existing item makes a local copy and I can see no way of turning that off.

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Ok, I have VB class which I want to use in a number of assembly. Add Exisiting makes a local copy of it. I do not want this.

Any ideas how I can only have one copy referenced from 'n' assemblys?

(For info this contains some text which a tool searches for and outputs to the console.)