Sharing class libraries across runtimes

There are a number of managed runtimes and profiles for .NET development, including the .NET Framework, Silverlight, Windows Phone, and now the WinRT profile for Windows 8 (also known as Windows Store). If you have to write code that can be shared across more than one of these runtimes, it usually involves either the use of copy-and-paste development (never a good idea!) or multiple versions of the same project and the use of linked files. The linked files approach is cumbersome and error prone and often a pain to work with when Visual Studio is telling you it can't open a file as it is already open in another project.

The solution to this is to use Portable Class Libraries. The idea here is that you can ...

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