Where is the information about the Referenced Assembly kept in an Asp.Net 2.0 Web Site project. Since, there is no .csproj file here we don't know where to look for this. We are facing problems because of multiple version of log4Net being referenced and want to remove one of them.
The only information a website has is the fact that the DLL exists in the bin directory of the website. When you add an external DLL to a project, that DLL is copied into the bin, and a .refresh file is added that provides Visual Studio with the path to the original DLL, so that it can refresh the DLL when it changes.
As far as I know, the assembly tag in web.config is only for GAC assemblies that are added to a project, not external DLLs.
As to your specific problem, if you have class libraries, it is possible that one of those references a different version of the DLL. It is also possible that you have multiple websites and one of them has a .refresh file that is pointing to a different version of the DLL.
In the web.config file under "assembly" tag
Related
Backgroud:
I am in the process of migrating a console application to be part of our existing web API project. All development work is done on Visual Studiod 2015 (with IIS Express). The application uses few third party datasource api DLLs to grab data from that datasource. All these DLLs are managed by our internal nuget package sources.
Issue:
Now the console application runs fine and can load up the those DLLs. I copied across the logic into my web project and added the DLLs via nuget. Solution builds but got the following error when starting up the web project:
Could not load file or assembly 'ABC.DLL' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found.
Where ABC.DLL is one of the third party DLLs.
I have done the following:
Confirm ABC.DLL is in the bin folder of my web project
Changed target build platform of my web project to be x86 and unchecked "Use 64 bit version of IIS Express for websites and project" setting in VS2015 (the third party dll is 32-bit)
Ran dumpbin.exe on ABC.DLL's dependency and got XYZ.dll,MSVCR120.dll,KERNEL32.dll,MSVCP120.dll,mscoree.dll
Regarding to the last step, those dlls were all missing in the bin folder (but the last 4 DLLs should be in system32 win directory so shouldn't matter?)
As for XYZ.dll, it is another third party library and is located on C:\Program Files (x86)\XYZ\ folder. I manually copied it across to the web project bin folder (in fact copied across all Dlls inside XYZ folder) and still get the same issue.
Questions
What am I missing here? The console app obviously can load ABC.DLL but the web project can't. Appreciate it if you can tell me what to check next.
The error message from start up web page is not very useful, is there a way to find out where the web project is trying to load the third party DLLs?
Thank you in advance!
Simply adding external DLLs to your Bin folder is not a great idea. Files can disappear from this folder for various reasons, such as your team members deleting a seemingly useless DLL, or through Visual Studio clearing it. Also, the output DLLs from referenced projects in your solution, would end up there, and are replaced every time you build your project.
What you should do for third-party DLLs, is create some "dependencies" folder in, or close to, your project, and stick the DLLs in there. Then you should right-click on the project, select Add Reference, browse to that new "dependencies" folder, and add a reference to the DLL that way. This is similar to the way NuGet works; it keeps DLLs in their respective folders inside the packages folder, and adds references to those DLLs.
I finally found the issue and thanks for all the help, I had to disable shadow copying in VS (mentioned in 64 bit managed assembly with unmanaged dependencies not loading in IIS / ASP.NET MVC 4).
I create an ASP.NET Webapp with Razor syntax in Visual Studio 2015, in C#.
I have to use 20 third party native c++ dll files (most of them for image handing, libtiff-5.dll, libpng16-16.dll, etc...).
Even when I manually copy those dll files into the bin folder, the app would not run. The error is:
Could not load file or assembly 'managedDllWrapper.DLL' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found.
But according to almost all hints in the internet, copying to bin folder should work.
When I copy the dlls into the C:\Windows folder, the webapp runs perfectly, but only locally on my machine.
Also, when I create a C# Console app, instead of a webapp, copying into the bin folder works fine.
Why doesn't it work for a webapp? How can I import those dlls?
I cannot reference them into Visual Studio to the project, as they are not a valid COM assembly.
the dlls are not imported in the code with dllimport, as I don't know the specific functions they provide. A managed dll wrapper uses the dlls.
Any ideas? Thanks!
I did not solve the problem one to one, but I circumvented the problem successfully:
By rewriting the c#/c++ wrapper with explicit dllimport, I adressed the dll files directly with path. Then, the dependent dll just have to be in the same folder as the referenced dll. This works also in web apps.
What's a 'bin.net3.5' file that gets created in the same folder as the VS2012 solution that contains an ASP.net website?
I would like to mention that this is a file and I am not referring to the project's 'bin' directory where projects' compiled dlls will be placed after a build.
As discussed it seems that this is something related to your project specific file. There is no such standard file created by Visual Studio 2012
Bin Folder
ASP.NET recognizes the Bin folder of a website as a special folder for
specific types of content. A Bin folder is meant to contain compiled
assemblies (.dll files) for custom ASP.NET controls, components, or
other code that you want to reference in your ASP.NET web application.
You can store compiled assemblies in the Bin folder, and other code
anywhere in the web application (such as code for pages) automatically
references it. A typical example is that you have the compiled code
for a custom class. You can copy the compiled assembly to the Bin
folder of your Web application and the class is then available to all
pages.
Some DLL's are kept in different folder names to determine the version, you'll notice when using nuget, the dll's will go into a packages folder, and are often split as net40, net45 etc
When you build the project, your Dll's will go into the Bin directory.
I need to reference external assemblies from a dozen asp.net web sites. These assemblies won't be in the GAC, but will be located in a location relative to the web site ("..\..\dlls\release").
From what I understand, Visual studio doesn't have an explicit assembly reference, or way to link a web site to an external .csproj or .dll library. (Unlike a web project).
These sites are sample projects for the open-source image-resizing HttpModule http://imageresizingin.net/.
I don't want to make users run a .bat file to copy the dlls into each /bin folder.
Is there some secret hints file I can use to let visual studio know where to look?
I'm working on dynamic assembly resolution, but that won't help visual studio at all, just hosted versions of the site.
Add the assemblies' full names to the <compilation> element of Web.config, and put them in the GAC on your dev machine.
I've converted a Visual Studio 2005 Website Project into a Web Application Project by creating a new web app project then copying in all the files and using the 'Convert to Web Application' option. I've added all the same references from the Website project to the web app project. After that I'm down to 1 error in the compiler and it's due to a referenced project.
Error 8
The type 'CSLA.ReadOnlyCollectionBase' is defined in an assembly
that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'CSLA, Version=1.3.1.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1ebd9544eb4fe327'. C:\Development\WebApp\WebUI
\Page1.aspx.cs 154 24 WebApp
I've checked and there is a reference to the project and it has a class file for ReadOnlyCollectionBase. The DLL is signed, could this have something to do with it? Also I've copied the web.config directly from the website project into the web app project.
Any help appreciated.
I wouldn't think that this would be a bug with authentication. It is a old version of CSLA though. I would make sure that the CSLA assembly is added as a reference to the web application and exists in the bin directory (Set the Copy Local property on the reference).
Thanks
-Blake Niemyjski (Author of the CodeSmith CSLA Templates)
This just means that you are referencing a dll which uses CSLA and so you need to add a reference to CSLA on that project. This is probably your web project.