A common problem when developing Silverlight applications is how to share classes and especially (Entity Framework) entities which are compiled for the full .NET framework in a Silverlight application. Silverlight is a browser plugin and a platform independent subset of the full .NET framework. Therefore Visual Studio does not allow referencing .NET assemblies from your Silverlight application.

Fortunately there is a very simple technique to share source code. In this article I will try to demonstrate this technique with several real world examples and I will give you some handy tips.

• Referencing assemblies
• Linking files in Silverlight assemblies
• Using the SILVERLIGHT compiler directive
  
• Sharing code between WPF and Silverlight
• Sharing (POCO) entities between your .NET domain layer and Silverlight
• Sharing extension methods between .NET and Silverlight
• Sharing logic in your Entity Framework entities between your .NET domain layer and Silverlight
• Sharing common logic and separating framework dependent implementations