I installed Unity 2017 with Visual Studio 2017. I am attempting to add an external DLL to the Visual Studio project through the solution explorer. When I right click on References, the "Add Reference" option is completely missing!
I'm trying to use NpgSQL. Hence, the need to add npgsql.dll.
Can anyone give light?
The Add Reference... is in a different place in this case.
Things to do in Unity:
Create a folder named Plugins as a child to your Assets folder. (Assets\Plugins...)
Next copy your DLL to this plugins folder. You can do this using Windows Explorer or just drag it into the folder in the Unity editor, like shown:
Things to do in Visual Studio:
Click on Analyzers in your project as shown below, then click Project from your menu, then navigate to Add Reference...:
Now Browse to your DLL:
And... there it is:
Accepted Brien's answer (Thank you, Brien!).
I'm adding my own answer pertinent to Npgsql.dll, because it's apparently a common problem all over the internet with poor documentation. If you got here from google about Npgsql.dll then read on:
Unity (for some unknown reason) comes bundled with it's own npgsql.dll inside of the application mono/2_0 folder. Some people have reported conflicts with this.
Many of the npgsql.dll versions currently do not work with Unity. Attempting to include them in Unity's assets will cause Unity to throw a Type error. This is what caused me to think that I needed to add the file as a reference in C#. This is why I came here and asked the question about Add Reference. But, with Unity, this was simply wrong on my part.
As far as I can tell, Unity insists on managing all project properties and references for you. Both managed and unmanaged DLLs must be added via Unity assets. Even Visual Studio project properties cannot be changed within Visual Studio for Unity. And if you attempt to edit the .csproj files (for instance to disable compiler warnings), Unity will overwrite the .csproj files completely next time you load your Unity project.
Anyone who has problems getting Npgsql.dll to work in Unity needs to use the proper Unity workflow where you drop npgsql.dll into Unity assets. If you get errors, it's an npgsql.dll version conflict. Try other versions of the dll first.
This gentleman has provided a Unity specific build to resolve a namespace conflict (Just pull the dll from the bin folder on the Github link):
Unity NPGSQL.DLL
Unity 2017 currently allows you to change to .NET 4.6 as an experimental setting. Some people have toyed with using that setting to get newer versions of npgsql.dll to work properly, but they report intermittent results. For now, I solved my problem with Unitynpgsql.dll. It's an older build, so hopefully I won't run into any features I need that it doesn't support. If so, I'll probably just work around them.
To anyone else trying to make npgsql.dll work in Unity: do not despair, just try to resolve the version conflicts. Also here is another relevant recent thread about it:
Barebones Master Server Npgsql.dll Issue - January 2018
Related
I'm a bit of a noob on that topic so I'm searching for help. I need to install this library (https://github.com/twcclegg/libphonenumber-csharp) for a unity project where I need to check phone numbers.
But as I always made simple games in unity I really don't know how to do that and I don't really know either what to search to find an answer.
If anyone of you knows how to do it, it will really make my day.
Thank you
Once do a build on a project you want to use in Unity, then find the DLL output from the build. I recommend you do Release Builds, but for now if you are not familiar with Visual Studio just use what you were able to build. If there are multiple directories then you only need one - the best one to use would be any labelled ".NET Standard" which it seems you have a .net standard 2.0 directory.
Go to your Unity project in the Assets folder, and if there isn't already a Plugins folder create one. Then in Assets/Plugins create a folder named whatever you want for the library - in this case PhoneNumber would be fine. So you would have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber and you would copy/paste the contents of your NetStandard2 folder there.
In the end you should have Assets/Plugins/PhoneNumber/PhoneNumber.dll
As soon as you have that dll, you can switch back to Unity and see if it worked by checking the Unity Console for any Errors. You might receive errors saying it could not load the DLL. Almost always if it can not load the DLL it is because of missing dependent DLLs - which is why I said to copy the entire folder contents inside the "NetStandard2" folder since it may contain more than just PhoneNumber.dll - it may have it's necessary dependent dlls also.
If not, you can read the error output and hopefully get a clue as to what dependent dlls are missing. You can also expand the Dependencies in Visual Studio.
Typically the DLL failing to be loaded in Unity is because of missing dependent DLLs. Expanding the Dependencies, which is found under the project name in the Solution Explorer window on the right side of Visual Studio, will show you what libraries it requires. Most of what you see under dependencies (if not all) will require a similarly named dll. Under the netstandard2.0 dependency I see System.Collections.Immutable - so you may need a System.Collections.Immutable.dll which should (usually) be in the output folder when you build the project. You would also need that dll in Unity in your PhoneNumber folder along with PhoneNumber.dll
I tried to install log4net for use in my Unity project with the following command :
Install-Package Unity.log4net
However, when I go back to the editor, then back to Visual Studio again, the log4net reference is removed, just like the Unity Editor had regenerated the project or something like that. The log4net reference no longer appears in the reference list and thus the log4net namespace can no longer be found.
I'm using Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition.
Has anyone experienced that and found a solution ? Thanks !
It seems like one cannot freely add references to a Unity project since Unity has to know about them. DLLs should be placed in a folder of the project called Plugins and then it works.
However it's weird that people are telling to use nuget packages. I'm assuming that must work somehow, but I don't know how. The solution above is dirty, but at least it works.
Unity projects require a special process to add NuGet packages. This is because when you open a project in Unity, its Visual Studio project files are regenerated, undoing necessary configurations. To add a package from NuGet to your Unity project you can check this doc from Microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/zh-cn/visualstudio/cross-platform/unity-scripting-upgrade?view=vs-2019
I'm going to create my first managed plugin for Unity (2018.2) using Visual Studio Community for Mac (7.6.11 build 9).
I've read the documentation but I think that the step-by-step instructions are not meant to be followed on Visual Studio Community for Mac.
As you can see in the screenshot below, I've created several projects using each and every library template available.
All of them compiled successfully to a DLL targeting versions of .NET framework that are incompatible with Unity.
The only project I could change the .NET framework version to match Unity's 3.5 is the one based on the Other > .NET > Library.
Everything works fine but I'd like to know if the assumptions, the process and the final result are correct. Can you tell me, please?
I don't know the difference between the "Class" and the "Class Library" option but you're supposed to use the "Class Library" option. This is not the main point of this answer.
Two future issues you haven't solved yet:
1. Referencing Unity's API.
If you ever have to use any Unity library or API in youir plugin such as Vector3, you need to add Unity's UnityEngine.dll to your library settings. If you don't, you will run-time exceptions.
Go to Project --> Add Reference ---> Browse ---> Browse Button
then select <UnityInstallationDirecory>\Editor\Data\Managed\UnityEngine.dll. You can now build your managed plugin. Since you're using Mac, this path is different on your OS. On Mac, this could be /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/Frameworks/Managed/UnityEngine.dll. You just have to find where UnityEngine.dll is located.
2. Invisible stack trace
With your current setup, if you run into error with your managed plugin, the stack trace won't be there. You won't have the file names and line numbers and this makes is very hard to debug your plugin code.
When you build the project, Visual Studio generates a PDB file instead of an MDB file. Unity can't use this directly. You have to convert the PDB files into MDB files.
From command line, run this:
<UnityInstallationDirecory>\Data\MonoBleedingEdge\lib\mono\4.5\pdb2mdb.exe UnmanagedPlugin.dll
Again, the path might be different on Mac, you just need to find "pdb2mdb.exe" that converts the PDB files into MDB files.
After that, copy the MDB and dll file into the "Assets" folder in your Unity project.
I have created a brand new Xamarin.Forms project, targeting iOS, in Visual Studio for macOS, and when I try to build I get the following errors, in AppDelegate.cs, about missing assembly references.
I have tried adding references, but I am presented with a blank window.
I also tried updating all NuGet packages, since I found an SO answer which suggested this might resolve the issue, but I'm still having the same problems.
This is my first experience of trying to use Xamarin, and so I really have no idea what I'm supposed to do or what references the project requires to be able to build.
The following are all the dependencies the template project starts out with.
Does anybody know what it is that's missing? How can I get this working? I have XCode 9.3 installed, and Visual Studio is up to date, so that shouldn't be an issue I don't think.
The following image shows the structure of the two projects created when I ran the wizard to generate the new Xamarin.Forms solution.
I am using Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise to generate Coded UI Tests. Things have been working well until this morning. When I attempt to create a new Solution/Project, I am given the following error:
I am then able finish loading the project. However, I see another issue in solution explorer:
Note that there is no path given for the selected reference. If I try to remove it/add it back as a reference manually, I still do not see a path or version. I have tried the following:
Selected different .Net framework versions when creating the solution/project
Tried different project types: Window Forms, Class Library
Repaired visual studio
Repaired .Net Framework 4.6.1
So far I have been unable to make the error go away. Any other suggestions?
I was not able to resolve this issue. I ended up performing a reinstall of the OS/Visual Studio to get things working again.