Summary

In this chapter, you learned about the Managed Extensibility Framework. You learned about imports, exports, and parts. I showed you how to use catalogs to inform MEF where to look for dependencies in your application, and how the container ties everything together. You saw how MEF manages the lifetime of the dependencies it resolves. “Lazy loading” demonstrated how to instantiate dependencies only when needed, and metadata provided the means to filter instances before referencing them. The chapter concluded with you learning how to troubleshoot MEF.

In the next chapter, you learn about testing. I share the importance of testing along with some case studies that demonstrate that testing is not just busy work. Unit tests contribute to the quality of your work and when done correctly may actually accelerate your development schedule.