I got a DLL registered in the GAC which has a bug in it (v4.2.0).
I've therefore fixed that bug, updated the file version only (v4.2.1) (keeping the assembly version, v4.2.0) and built a new MSI package.
The problem is that the DLL is not installed in the GAC. I verified this by right-clicking on the DLL in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\MyDLL\v4.0_4.2.0.0__2269313d92725976 and checked the file version, which is still v4.2.0 There are also no other folders created under C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\MyDLL.
But! If I uninstall the first version and then install the new DLL it get's installed OK in the GAC.
Am I approaching this the wrong way? Our applications are set to use specific versions, so just creating assembly version v4.3.0 and install it in the GAC wont work.
Update
I've found the article about publisher policies ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891030) and are attempting that instead. I've generated the policy assembly. But Visual Studio crashes when I try to add it to the setup project =(
I've also tried to add it as a content file to the primary project (and then add content files to GAC). But then it complains on the assembly not being signed.
So I'm still stuck.
Updating the [AssemblyFileVersion] for a bug fix is usually the right approach, although it gets iffy if you do so for an assembly in the GAC. You run the risk of breaking another app that also uses the assembly and unintentionally depends on the buggy behavior to function correctly. An unintentional mistake like renaming a public method is of course always a good way to break an app, the road to DLL Hell is paved with many good intentions that turned out bad.
The GAC however only pays attention to [AssemblyVersion] and ignores the file version. To get the updated assembly to replace the existing one you do have to remove the old one first. This is intentional, preventing accidental replacement.
A <bindingRedirect> in the .config file of the app you want to repair will be a lot easier to get going than a publisher policy.
I believe this has to do with what parameters of a .NET assembly the GAC uses to give it a unique identifier. If the assembly version is one of those uniqueness parameters, but file version is not, that may explain your symptoms. Specifically this pertains to the GACs need for a strong named assembly
This link says as much
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wd40t7ad.aspx
Related
I have a DLL I generate from a C# project. I then register it via regasm so that the library can be used inside several legacy VB scripts.
Recently I created a new project (C# console app) that will reuse certain modular aspects of the original library, and per good programming practice it made sense to add the library to the GAC for reuse by this and any future projects.
I've found that it plays nice at first, but after the server is rebooted, the VB scripts crash and burn, claiming they are unable to create an object of one of the types defined in the library.
The fix involves removing the library from the GAC and re-registering the library via regasm.
The libraries in the registry and GAC come from the same physical DLL file - same directory and everything.
I've confirmed the existence of registry entries for the library every step of the way, which says regasm did its job.
GAC entries only exist when the library is installed, and properly disappear when it is uninstalled. They only ever appear under GAC_MSIL, where, to my knowledge, they should be.
Any ideas why this is happening?
EDIT: I did not read the fine print, haha. On the regasm documentation I just saw this: "Creates a Codebase entry in the registry. The Codebase entry specifies the file path for an assembly that's not installed in the global assembly cache. Don't specify this option if you will subsequently install the assembly that you're registering into the global assembly cache. It is strongly recommended the assemblyFile argument that you specify with the /codebase option be a strong-named assembly." I was using that switch, so I will dig deeper. In the meantime any additional insights are greatly appreciated.
I would guess you didn't renew the GUIDs and/or distinguish the fully qualified type names of the new library and when you installed it with regasm, the old entries in the registry got overwritten. Registering the old library again has overwritten the new library's registry, but as you don't use it through COM that didn't affect it and now the scripts work again.
The program worked fine until I did this:
Added a new class under an existing file and an existing namespace.
Added settings to that project the new class belongs to.
Build the solution.
Build the setup project.
Installed the new version on a machine.
When I start the new version on the machine, then I get:
Unhandled Exception:
System.TypeLoadException: Could not
load type
'SI.AS.CommonLogic.Utils.ErrorLog'
from assembly
'SI.AS.CommonLogic.ErrorUtils,
Versions=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=925c8734ae397609'. at
RSMonitor.RSMonitorMain.Main(String[]
args)
ErrorUtils is the new class I have added. There was a file with a static class in it. I added another static class under it and added settings to the project. It runs smoothly on my developer machine in debug mode. But I can't install and run it on another machine. The program can call the other static class from the same file. What am I missing here?
** update **
I tried to install it for a 2nd time and checked the DLL. The timestamp matched the latest compiled version and now it works. I have no idea why it didn't work last time, because it is the same package I installed again. But if I get same error, then I'll try out your suggestions.
Your program looks like it is having trouble locating another assembly, probably called SI.AS.CommonLogic.ErrorUtils.dll. Either that, or it can only find the wrong version of this assembly.
Is this an assembly that is part of your solution?
If so, is it in the "bin" directory on the machines that it is failing to run on (in other words, is this assembly being deployed correctly with your app)?
If not, is this a part of a seperately installed component or application that is installed on your machine but not on the others (ie is this an external dependency that is missing on the other machines)?
One thing that may help here, is to use the Assembly Binding Log Viewer on both the miachine this does work on, and the machine it doesn't to see where it gets loaded from in the working case, and where it is trying to load it from in the failing case.
Note you may need to make a registry change to get this to log all assembly bin info:
Set the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog registry value to 1 (the value is a DWORD).
It sounds like your DLLs aren't being deployed/overwritten correctly. Try copying your CommonLogic DLL from your development machine to the installation directory and see if it can load it then - and then figure out why!
The other assembly wasn't updated correctly, it is still the old version. Try replacing the assembly by hand with the current version and check if the problem persists; it should go away though.
It sounds like an old version of your assembly is being loaded from somewhere.
A few things to check:
Firstly, have you incorrectly set up a reference to an assembly instead of a project? This can result in subtle, order-dependent build problems. Ensure that the reference type is "project", not "assembly".
Secondly, is the culprit assembly in the GAC on the developer machine? Even if the assembly is a dependency of your build, if it's in the GAC, it may not be copied to your output directory. This problem manifests itself in a very pernicious fashion -- everything looks fine on the developer machine (as it has the assembly in the GAC) despite the build output being wrong, and the customer machine will blow up because the assembly is neither in the GAC nor the install directory. I can't remember if this only applies to assembly references or whether project references will pick it up, too. It's easy to test if it's a problem, though -- just do a clean build, then build your project and examine the assemblies copied to the output directory. They should all be there. If your culprit .dll is missing then you know it's a problem.
I worked at a company that (briefly) built installers for internal releases without using proper assembly versioning, resulting in absolutely terrible problems of this ilk (developer machines would be riddled with assemblies in the GAC).
Check the GAC on both the developer and customer machines. Also try what Josh suggested: Copy the culprit DLL from the developer machine to the customer machine's install directory to see if that fixes it, then work from there.
I'm getting the following error:
error CS1704: An assembly with the same simple name
'Interop.xxx.dll, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=null has already been imported. Try removing one of the
references or sign them to enable side-by-side.
Everything I've seen says that I am referencing two assemblies with the same name and I need to remove one of them. However, I've checked and I'm only referencing it once.
This also only happens when I'm using msbuild to build from the command line on my dev box. If I build through Visual Studio or do a clean build on our CI server I don't see this error.
I've tried completely removing all of my source and building from scratch to more closely resemble the build machine but no luck.
So it looks like I can't read today!
The project had a reference to the Interop and a COM reference that generated the "same" interop. So there were two and I just didn't search very well. I still don't understand why it worked in other places but this did fix it.
In the Error List window, the project that was triggering this error was listed in the Project column. I got around the error by doing the following:
I unloaded the listed project (right-click => Unload Project)
Opened the XML for edit (right-click the unloaded project => Edit {ProjectName.csproj}).
Searched for the offending .dll, and noticed it was listed multiple times in the XML
Removed the entire Reference tag related to the offending dll, and did so for every copy of the reference except the first one listed
The reason it was listed multiple times was because several referenced libraries used that dll. This shouldn't be a problem, in and of itself, so I'm not sure what caused this error to suddenly pop up for me. I'll update this answer if I figure that out.
In my case the duplicate entry was caused by a NuGet package reference and a direct file reference to the same assembly in the packages folder. I am not sure how the project got into this state, but unloading the project and searching the XML file for the offending assembly name resolved the issue for me.
Note that in my case this started happening after updating a NuGet package to a newer version with no other changes to the project, so this maybe caused by a bug in NuGet.
If this is a web project, are there any strong-named references to the other version there? Those won't show up as a project dependency, but will cause a run-time error like you describe. Hope that helps
I had this problem but in my case, I had an old copy placed in the current folder for the EXE loading my component, that was loaded together with the current one, that was loaded by hand from my projects folder. Deleting that old copy solved my problem.
I used Debug > Windows > Modules window to see which modules were loaded at that time and that solved my problem.
For others facing the same as me: if building via command line using property AssemblyName, it will overwrite all assemblies generated by all solution projects - in other words, you will end up with (N -1) assemblies named the same where N is the no. of projects - the startup one (which generally will generate an exe).
This happens because all build command line properties are global and overwrite any project-specific setting. See this and this.
From the msdn link mentioned above:
Global properties are properties that are set by using the
/property switch on the command line, or properties that are set by
the integrated development environment (IDE) before a project is
built. These global properties are applied to all projects that are
built by using this Engine.
In my specific case, where Jenkins is the CI tool, I ended up adding a windows batch command at the end to rename the .exe only to what I originally intended when passing the AssemblyName parameter.
For those developing UWP projects that have project references that include specifically the Microsoft.Windows.SDK.Contracts nuget package (or other dependencies that reference it), this is a common error when the version of the SDK contracts is targeting a different version of the runtime to how your project is configured.
For instance, when targeting Windows 10, version 1903:
Any dependencies or reference projects should target or at least support the same runtime version.
it is common thought process to update all NuGet packages when a new stable version is available, but this is not always a helpful practise on its own. Just because a new stable version of a package is available does not mean that you should or that you can easily use that version.
Even though this package for SDK contracts has a stable update, it is not compatible with my main project configuration, Nuget does not know this so it allows the update.
This package is specifically designed to provide windows dlls for project types that DO NOT have windows platform targeting support, it copies the same dlls that are included by the UWP targeting config. By installing later versions of the package the references from the satellite project will be included in the output along with those provided due to platform targeting, ultimately causing OPs error.
There are similar SDK and targeting packs for Windows IoT Device Runtimes, this information should help you identify and resolve those issues if you get stuck on this issue as my team often does :)
In my case, the issue was on wrong characters in the ProjectReference section of my csproj file.
Background
I have a project that references another library I maintain, which I publish as a NuGet package.
Whenever I make changes to my library, I usually reference the local dll in my project to test and make sure everything looks good before I publish the library as a NuGet package.
When testing, I just comment out the PackageReference line and uncomment the ProjectReference one so it references my local dll, like so:
<ProjectReference Include="..\..\my-class-library\MyClassLibrary.csproj" />
<!--<PackageReference="MyClassLibrary" Version="2.0.1"/>-->
Root cause
I had the slashes inverted, so I was using / rather than \ in the path, like so:
<ProjectReference Include="../../my-class-library/MyClassLibrary.csproj" />
Once corrected, the issue went away.
Try this instead: remove Interop.xx.dll from the reference section in Solution Explorer and Rebuild the project
In our case this error was shown when we had a duplicate reference inside the .csproj file (although I have no idea how this happened).
The difference to an already posted answer is that, in our case, one was a project reference and another one was direct binary reference to a dll.
Once we removed one of those, project correctly compiled.
So here's the problem. I'm writing some StyleCop plug-in assemblies for use at the company I work for. As such, these assemblies need to reference Microsoft.StyleCop.CSharp.dll for example, which is strongly named.
The problem comes in that if I build this and pass it along to the developers in my group, they must have the same version of the StyleCop dll (currently 4.3.3.0) or it fails to load.
What is the best way to make my add-on rules DLL more independent? Should I just install my 4.3.3.0 version of those subordinate StyleCop dlls in the GAC? Can an assembly (vs an application) use a policy file?
Oh, and one of the main problems is i would like it to work with ANY version of StyleCop the client has installed (or at least 4.3.3.0 or later) if possible.
Many thanks in advance.
Yes you should just install the same version for the other developers. If you do not, you may have unpredictable runtime failures due to changes within StyleCop. Presumably that is why they bothered to increment the version number.
If you don't want to do this, you can configure a different assembly binding in the app.config file. In the config the actual version number which you intend to use at runtime is needed. And yes, this can even be done via policy. But again, I think you are better served by including the correct DLL in the first place.
In your project, go to the properties on the StyleCop reference. Try setting the "Specific Version" property to false.
We code in C# using VS2008 SP1. We have a server that runs Team System Server 2008 which we use for source control, tasks etc. The server is also our build machine for Team Build. This has been working just fine for a long time. Untill now. We get these error messages when trying to build one of our projects that has a reference to one external assembly (this happens both via Team Build, and when logging on physically and doing a regular build via Visual Studio):
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Microsoft.Common.targets
: warning MSB3246: Resolved file has a
bad image, no metadata, or is
otherwise inaccessible. Could not load
file or assembly 'C:\Program
Files\Syncfusion\Essential
Studio\7.1.0.21\Assemblies\3.5\Syncfusion.XlsIO.Base.dll'
or one of its dependencies. The module
was expected to contain an assembly
manifest.
C:\Program
Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\ReportingServices\Microsoft.ReportingServices.targets(24,2):
error MSB4062: The
"Microsoft.Reporting.RdlCompile" task
could not be loaded from the assembly
Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common,
Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a. Could
not load file or assembly
'Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common,
Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or
one of its dependencies. The module
was expected to contain an assembly
manifest. Confirm that the
declaration is correct, and that the
assembly and all its dependencies are
available.
The referenced component
'Syncfusion.XlsIO.Base' could not be
found.
These errors are for one project with one problematic assembly reference. When I try to build the entire solution there are of course many more errors because of this one. And there are two other projects that has the same problem with other assembly references. I have a list of the referenced assemblies that VS can't seem to resolve:
Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms
Syncfusion.Compression.Base
Syncfusion.Core
Syncfusion.XlsIO.Base
The Syncfusion assemblies are from a 3rd-party component package. The other two are related to the Microsoft ReportViewer component.
The references has been added via the Add Reference window, in the .NET tab, so I don't think there is anything suspicious about that. In the properties window for the assembly reference, there is no value in Culture, Description, Path, Runtime Version or Strong Name. Version says 0.0.0.0 and Resolved is False. I guess it is pretty obvious that VS cant resolve the reference. My question is why??? I've scratched my head a lot over this one. This only occurs on the server, the solution builds just fine on both my machine, and my coworkers machine. The assembly reference properties are fine on our machines.
I have tried uninstalling the 3rd-party component (on the server of course), and then reinstalling it again. Didn't help. I tried to repair the VS2008 installation. Didn't help. Tried to retrieve an earlier version from source control (that I know has buildt on the server before), and I got the same error messages. I have checked file permissions, and everything appears to be in order. I am running out of ideas...
How do I solve this?
Update 16.02.2009:
I have tried to compare ildasm output of the dll on my pc and on the server (see the comment I wrote about that), and there is one small difference in a line that to me appears to be a comment. I must admit that I don't understand why there is a difference at all, so maybe someone could explain that to me?
I also tried running a virus scan on the server. Didn't help. Tried to remove the reference and then readd it by browsing to the dll on disk. Didn't work.
Update 17.03.2009:
I've found the solution! The culprit was the TruPrevent module of Panda Antivirus. After disabling the module, everything works! =)
I discovered this with the help of fuslogvw.exe and the log it generated. Googled the result, and stumbled upon this blog entry.. Hope this can help somebody else to.
Almost certainly the problem is environmental - not source related.
Some ideas ...
(i) Try disabling your anti-virus/anti-malware tools - I've seen cases where these tools (particularly Trend Micro Antivirus, for some reason) can keep a DLL file locked after (during?) scanning, interfering with compilers.
(ii) Check your PATH environment variable. Even in these modern days, the PATH variable is used to resolve some things - if this is messed up (too long, maximum length is 2048 characters IIRC) then things can be odd.
(iii) You've checked File permissions - have you checked permissions in the registry? For example, SyncFusion installs its license key in both the User and Machine hives - if the build server can't read one or the other, could cause issues.
Good luck!
It could also be that the referenced assemblies are in the GAC on the dev machine, but not on the build machine. Get it out of the GAC, into your source repository, and reference it by path.
We've had the same problem, turns out the C drive was full (only had 28MB).
Freeing space resolved the issue, even though the build happens on D.
Do you see any differences between ildasm of this file
'C:\Program Files\Syncfusion\Essential Studio\7.1.0.21\Assemblies\3.5\Syncfusion.XlsIO.Base.dll'
on your machine versus on the server?
My suspicion is that the user that the build process is under does not have access to the folder that your 3rd party control is in. Since this functions properly on your machines, it is almost certainly user/permission specific.
Your 3rd party dll may depend on unmanaged dlls. Often it's because a specific version of the VC++ Runtime Dlls are missing.
Open the Dll with the Dependency Walker http://www.dependencywalker.com/ on your server and check for missing references.
Not sure if this'll help in your case, but I did have something similar before where a dll apparently got unregistered somehow, and running regsvr32 on the dll did the trick.