This is so frustrating. For some reason I have added a dependency Microsoft.VisualStudio.Text.Logic into my application so when I deploy it, it gives me the typical "Unable to install or run the application. The application requires that assembly XXX be installed in the Global Assmebly Cache (GAC) first". No big deal.
So I went to the application files section and it doesn't show up. Then I checked my references and nothing shows up. As a last ditch effort I checked under the "Add References" panel and it's not there. For some reason my Build Server has it, but all my end users as well as my development machine do not. Is there anywhere that I can check as to what dependencies are required and remove them? I cant find any code in my application that would required this DLL.
I guess this question can be generalized as this: "What is the best way to find dependencies for a project to prevent new ones from being created"?
So i found a solution that probably doesnt directly solve it for most people, but it is something good to keep in mind. What i didnt realize was that the Visual Studio versions were different and for some reason the one on the build server was adding a bunch of dependencies (like 15). I solved the issue by updating the server to contain the same visual studio version as my development machine.
Related
I've been googling this all afternoon and I found any number of people ask the question, and all of the place a few people would answer it with the same things, and then there's a dozen comments by the rest of the world and the OP about how those answer don't fix it. So I'm going to include what I've tried here, and if your solution is to do one of the things I've already tried, I'm going to be very sad.
I have a solution in Visual Studio 2019 that has a class library, a wpf application, and a setup project (using the setup project extension). The WPF app also references a bunch of assemblies of course, but one of those is from another project I maintain in a different solution. I copy/paste the compiled dll after I update it from its own project to this one. Nothing tricky, everything works.
The problem is the installer. If I build everything and then build the installer, it produces an MSI as expected. If I right click on the project in Visual Studio and choose "Install", everything is perfect.
The problem is after I make some updates to either of the code projects, I then build both and build the setup project, and again if I right click to install it's perfect. If I run the MSI though, it doesn't always update the target files. If I delete the target files it will create them with the new ones, but it won't overwrite the old ones correctly.
AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion are both being incremented each time and are being kept in sync with the "Version" property of the setup project. I tested with these extensively, the new installer that isn't working properly 100% has updated dlls in it with correctly updated version numbers.
When I change the "version" of the setup, it asks to change the GUID for the ProductCode. I say yes, it changes the code. I have also tested without doing this and that makes it much worse as we all know.
"RemovePreviousVersions" is set to "true" in the installer project
If I right click the project and choose "Install" it seems to be 100% reliable at upgrading the existing installation.
If I run the MSI directly it seems to be 100% unreliable and never gets it right.
Side note, it does seem to usually but not always get the WPF application upgraded and the other project dll I bring in if I remember to update its version, but the class library (which is referenced by the WPF application) almost never works.
Has anyone got this to work reliably?
For all the people finding this in the future, here's the final word:
The build project can be inconsistent, this is well documented all over the internet as I have above. You're not doing anything wrong - it is just inconsistent.
Stop trying to solve it if it's affecting your project and move on (I've had a dozen projects before this one work just fine). The consensus seems to be to use WiX, but I'm not here to discuss the alternatives. Personally I am going to embark on the WiX learning curve though.
I have two brand new C# .NET Standard libraries. They each have a project reference to an older .NET 3.5 Framework library. Only one of the two have a yellow icon on the reference.
Everything builds and runs fine but the triangle still exists, why?
I would hope they have a better way to report reference issues
than an unlabeled yellow icon.
Not sure if it's your real question. But you can check the Error List window to get details about why yellow icon displays on the References.
Everything builds and runs fine.
For some scenario, the build in VS can succeed although some build warnings occurs. And it will only fail when some build errors exist.
I add reference to ForTest.dll in my project, this assembly is missing or not compatible with current project, then it displays yellow icon in References. Now since in my project, it doesn't call functions from the ForTest.dll, so it won't exactly affect my build process. Then the project builds successfully and runs fine.
I have tried looking at the build log, in detailed mode, for an error
message, but cannot find anything obvious.
When building a solution with several projects, and set the log in Detailed mode, it's easier to get lost in the hundreds of build logs. Since the yellow icon only displays for one project, you can right-click the project=>rebuild to build the project, it makes the message in build log more clear.
Or just use the Error List window as I suggest above to check the warnings and errors instead of hundreds of logs during Trouble-shooting.
In addition: If you can't find any info in Error List window, then maybe the reason why the yellow icon occurs is because VS didn't load the project well. Please try right-click the project=> unload and reload the project in solution explorer. If it persists,close all vs instance and delete the .vs folder in solution directory, and restart vs.
According to Microsoft, these yellow warning signs get added for every new reference and then removed once the reference is successfully added (=assumed guilty until proven innocent). If some yellow warning remains in the solution explorer, VS knows only that that reference is missing, but doesn't know why and can therefore not display a warning message in the Error window.
Not being able to find out why there is a warning sign is very annoying. The problem was reported, but Microsoft's standard response is: "This problem seems not to be requested enough to be resolved, but if you like, you can contribute your own solution."
So if you read so far, can you please go to developercommunity.visualstudio.com: tell me what's wrong with the reference 2 and vote this issue up, telling MS they should indeed fix this.
After spending hours trying to solve a none existing error, I gave up and closed VS. When I started it again, the problem was gone.
These errors also occur when adding a NuGet package that is not compatible with the current .NET (such as .NET Framework app under .NET Standard or .NET Core, or a .NET version such as referencing .NET Framework 4.8 library from an older .NET version).
Check that the package dependency is the same as the project you're working with.
It could also mean that the third party assembly you have on your machine is not registered in the gac and hence not being found. For older projects mostly if I have to hand copy over the dlls, I will then register them with this powershell script in the directory they reside in:
gci *.dll | % { gacutil /i $_.Name }
I currently have one solution that references ten .dll files. Those .dll files in turn all reference a shared .dll file.
Today I started getting an error while debugging that stated, "The source file is different from when the module was built error.", immediately following a recompile of the shared .dll.
I tried all of the usual. I deleted bin and object folders. I recompiled. I closed all instances of Visual Studio and restarted after they were all closed. I restarted my machine. Nothing fixed seemed to fix it.
I'm guessing one of your 10 DLLs references a different copy of the shared DLL, and not the one you compiled.
Since you have all the sources, put all the projects in the same solution, and have the DLLs reference the shared DLL's project. This will solve your problem.
It has happened to me too. Once I fixed it by recompiling project-by-project from ground up (in the same order that VS does).
Another time this didn't help. I can't remember what I did then.
I believe it is a bug in VS.
I notice you are running VS2008. The problem might go away with an upgrade (the supposed bug might have been fixed). VS2010 is also nicer to work with than VS2008 so it could be areason of its own to stay current. Why not download an evaluation VS11 and try it there.
Move all projects to one solution, reference them in a simple and correct way. Compile. Now you have the right DLLs everywhere and can go back to your more diverse solution(s).
You can also try to use MSBuild. It is easy since you already have the projects in VS. Once it is build by MSBuild (which VS uses itself) it should probably compile in VS again.
Finally you can try to build with nAnt. Once it compiles you can probably compile in VS again.
Good luck. I've been there. It sucks.
I suppose you referencing in your project directly to some DLL, and not a project. Which means if you even cleanup and rebuild, the same dll will be used like a reference.
Very often this is a problem, so I suggesting you check your references.
[edit] Assumed this was asp.net, disregard. [/edit]
Have you deleted everything your temporary .NET folders?
Either in:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework[Your Version]\Temporary ASP.NET Files
or
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64[Your Version]\Temporary ASP.NET Files
When comparing last-modified dates of the shared .dll across output folders of all of the solutions with the file that was stored in the output folder of the primary solution, I noticed that they were not the same as the file that I had just built.
This didn't make sense to me, so I simply copied the new files into the output folder. This did NOT solve the problem. On subsequent builds, the old version was again placed into the output folder, immediately causing the error while debugging...
During compilation, an older version was being pulled along with one of the other referenced .dlls. There is obviously some sort of check that is made with the names of files pulled in so that only 1 file is used, but no check is made for latest version number.
I was able to actually solve the problem by creating a reference to the shared .dll from the primary solution. Direct references are obviously (or perhaps hopefully) pulled in before files that are referenced by references (and are already copied into the same output folder as those referenced .dlls), so the latest file was successfully pulled in first.
If clarity is needed, let me know!
I rarely respond to posts since I am generally too busy, but I just spent a ton of time on this same exact problem. I am running VS 2008 in Windows 7. I had set the my Visual Studio to run in XP Compatibility Mode to fix some issues I had with a different project and forgot to reset it to NOT run in compatibility mode.
Once I removed the Run In compatibility MODE (In Windows Explorer on the DevEnv.exe) my problem with the source being out of sync with the debug information went away.
Hopefully this might help someone in the future with the same problem.
My C# WinForms solution has two projects.
A DLL which is the main project I'm working on, and an executable WinForms I call "Sandbox" so that I can compile/run/debug the DLL easily in one go.
I'm working in .Net 4.0 for both projects.
Everything was working fine until I added some seemingly innocent code, and a reference to System.Web in the DLL.
Now my Sandbox project can't see the namespace of the DLL project. I didn't change anything which I believe should have affected this.
If I delete the project reference to the DLL from the Sandbox references and re-add it, then the red underlines all disappear and the colour coding comes back for all my classes etc; but as as soon as I try to build the solution, the whole thing falls apart again.
When I right-click the DLL project in the Sandbox's references and view in object browser, I can see the namespace and all the stuff in there.
I have a feeling this might be some sort of bug?
Is this some sort of VS2010 bug? I had this same issue a few months ago and I could only fix it at the time by making a whole new project and re-importing my files. This time, however, I have a bajillion files and will only do that as a last resort!
Edit:
After panickedly going through and undoing all my changes, trying to find what caused the problems, it seems to be this line:
string url = "http://maps.google.com?q=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(address);
If I comment out this line, then I get no namespace errors and the project builds fine. I can't see anything wrong with this line though.
I'm ready to declare this a bug in VS2010, this has bitten way too many programmers already. The fix is easy: Project + Properties, Application tab, change Target Framework to ".NET Framework 4" instead of the Client Profile that is selected by default.
System.Web is not included in the client profile. Having this option in the first place is quite silly, the client profile is only 15% smaller than the full version of .NET 4.0. Having it selected by default is even sillier. But I digress.
UPDATE: mercifully this all got fixed in VS2012. Which no longer makes the client profile the default for a new project. And the client profile got retired completely in .NET 4.5, good riddance.
Check to make sure that both projects are using the non-client profile for their target framework (go to each project's properties to do this).
One possibility is that the target .NET Framework version of the class library is higher than that of the project.
I faced this problem, and I solved it by closing visual studio, reopening visual studio, cleaning and rebuilding the solution. This worked for me. On some other posts, I have read the replies and most of users solved the problem by following this way.
Try building only the project with the Sandbox dll first independently.
Then point your executable project to the required dll and ensure copy local is set to true. in reference settings.
Tthen build the executable project.
Changing the target framework from the ".NET Framweork 4 Client Profile" to ".NET Framework 4" worked for me with a similar problem. I agree that the client profile doesn't seem to have much of an advantage to using it. I seem to get nailed with weird errors that I hunt for until I remember that Visual Studio defaults to the client profile. I guess the moral of the story when getting an error is: if "Rebuild Solution" doesn't work, check the Target framework...
If you tried already doing the Framework change, and still not worked, I hope this works for you (as it did for me): Simply add the necessary references from within your projects. Very obvious but I was doing it wrong until I found what was the issue.
I just had this issue and it turned out to be I had multiple namespaces being used that had the same object name (i.e. business objects had the same names as mvc models);
Fully qualifying the names fixed the issue for me.
I found posts mentioning issues with DEVPATH and webapps and I think MVC falls under this same band-wagon.
On my local PC; in one instance I need to be able to design and test our library of dlls; on another, I need to use these dlls, in various websites. Due to the number of sites we handle, we are looking at storing the dlls in the GAC in an attempt to avoid duplication.
When I want to work on the library I need to remove all the dlls from the GAC and then re-install them again once I have finished my development.
I have everything set as defined in various sources to make DEVPATH work, but it isnt working for me in my MVC project.
Is it possible to have dlls installed in the GAC, but run an MVC project that uses the DEVPATH copy.
I'm not having a lot of luck finding anything on the subject, but I am hoping it is possible.
Finally got a work around, it was quite obvious now I have done it.
It is a bit of work, but it does mean you can debug a website.
Also, it isn't using DEVPATH still, but it works so I am happy.
The main assumption I made was that the GAC always wins, even if you physically copy the dll to the bin the GAC will find the file first and use that reference.
So, the way I have found to work with local files (especially when I want to be debugging a website), is to change the assembly version number of the projects I reference to a new number. As this version doesn’t exist in the GAC, the Visual Studio webserver(cassini?) and iis web servers will use the local dlls. So any breakpoints I had added to my services etc. will then be picked up.