I've just finished a small game and now I want to rip out the internals for use as an "engine" for my next game.

Currently I'm using a number of external libraries (SlimDX, LuaInterface, etc) which are currently just added as References (using browse).

What I want to do instead is download the latest versions from their SVN servers and link those in.

The problem is (taking LuaInterface as an example) some of these external libraries have multiple projects in their solution, so if I add them to my "engine" solution I end up with a list of projects as long as my... arm.

Is there anything I can do about this? Is there a better way of combining projects?

[Edited by - adt7 on July 16, 2010 8:19:21 AM]

Thanks for that.

Does anyone else have any insight? How is this "dealt with" in professional studios who I'm sure have many more libraries than I ever will. I guess they just pick a version to use and keep the DLL around?

Following on from that, if the correct approach is just to keep the version of the library you're currently using handy and in the project folder, should these be kept on my SVN server?

Currently it's just me working on my projects, but I'll probably getting a couple of friends involved soon. I'm guessing it's good practice to have everything you need to build and run the project on SVN somehow?

In my experience it's common to just build the 3rd party libs separately and link to them the same way you'd link to Boost or the standard libraries. You may want a designated place where all 3rd party libraries live, outside of your own projects directory.