How do you put your design time view model in a separate assembly?

Question

I'm using MVVM Light and Prism with the view model locator pattern. I really like having a design time view model for use in Blend, but I don't necessarily want to ship it with my production code. Is there any way to put the design time view model in another assembly and then tell the view model locator to find it there? It seems like the design time assemblies (*.Design.dll) would help solve this problem, but I can't quite work out how.

Answer 1

Mike,
Add the following to your XAML..

xmlns:designTime="clr-namespace:MyDesignTimeNS;assembly=MyBinaryName"
d:DataContext="{d:DesignInstance designTime:DesignTimeObjectNameViewModel, IsDesignTimeCreatable=True}

With this, I'm able to keep my design time data in a separate binary and not distribute it.