Hi Opsimath

I think we have some confusion here.

My last post in this thread announced some work that was implemented and released last week that uses a new Shared Project system to enable the edit of libraries and/or additional project code.

The initial shared project functionality was released on the 3rd of Jan, with shared lib projects last week.

All new features are described in the release notes and an initial blog is here 

The previous (still supported) system is described briefly here which uses the local project \src\micro-api\libraries folder. Two drawbacks with this system are 1) it doesn't allow multiple projects to share a library 2) arduino have started to support source code under the \src folder so the arduino ide will attempt to compile your lib code as normal project code. You might feel the latter point is not relevant however it is peace of mind if your projects can also be easily compiled with the arduino ide.

The new shared library system allows you to edit and debug libraries that are located in any folder on your pc. You are not constrained to arduino special library locations. Therefore you, for example, could add a shared library project into "MySolution\Librraries\ServoLib\V1\Servo". This configuration would allow you to edit and use your version 1 of a cloned servo library. As I said the library can be located anywhere so version control and source control is easy.

Aside from the obvious benefits of shared library projects another very useful benefit is that the libraries show as visual studio projects in the solution instead of as source code deep below the project folder. You can see this in the picture I posted previously.

Using Visual Studio shared projects seems to be the right way to go. The feature is new and as such will expand over the next few months. There is already an option to automatically create a shared project for a library (see the Visual Micro Add Library menu) and there will shortly be an option to automatically clone a library to a new location.

Considering we are using the standard visual studio shared project system this document might also be of interest.

Finally just to say that most users are free users and the price of the software is very low. There is huge effort to keep the software current and little time for documentation and blogs. So user blogs are always appreciated!