Projects present in the ColorTab Visual Studio solution:
ColorTab.Designer
ColorTab.PocketPC
ColorTab.SmartPhone
ColorTab.WindowsCE
ColorTab.Desktop

All source code is common for all projects in the ColorTab solution. Projects other than the ColorTab.PocketPC project have the source code linked to the projects. Any changes need to be done once only.

The ColorTab.dll:
Each project will output the ColorTab.dll for that specific platform into the appropriate \bin\release directory.

The ColorTab.<platform name>.asmmeta.dll:
You will find in the PocketPC, Windows CE & SmartPhone output \bin directory an additional file with the name ColorTab.<platform name>.asmmeta.dll. This file holds property information for the ColorTab class. This file is achieved in the appropriate projects by including the Design time attributes for the properties. This attribute information can be found in the 'DTA' folder within the mentioned projects, present as XML.

The ColorTabDesigner.dll:
This file is used by Visual Studio to include the design time functionality such as the 'Add Tab' & 'Remove Tab' designer verbs shown at the bottom of ColorTab properties.
On every build of the ColorTab solution, or of the ColorTab.Designer project, the ColorTabDesigner.dll is built and registered in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) using a post built event (shown in the image below)



You can confirm the entry in the GAC by inspecting the folder C:\Windows\Assembly\

The ColorTabDesigner.dll MUST be registered in the GAC for Visual Studio to provide design time functionality.