AutoUnify stopping rollback from Azure 2.5 to Azure 2.3 - visual-studio

Question

My team recently tried to upgrade our WorkerRoles project to use Azure 2.5. But I've spent days on it and have had no joy resolving some weird worker role recycling issues and due to time pressure we're rolling back to Azure 2.3.
However, after changing all the references and the app.config file, when I try to run I get the following exception:
System.IO.FileLoadException was unhandled
Message: An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.FileLoadException' occurred in WaWorkerHost.exe
Additional information: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=2.3.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)
I tried changing my app.config bindings, etc. And it seems fine to me. Then I noticed a warning in the error console:
Found conflicts between different versions of the same dependent assembly that could not be resolved. These reference conflicts are listed in the build log when log verbosity is set to detailed.
So I ran my build again with the "give me lots of info" setting and I think I've found the issue:
2> Unified Dependency "Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime, Version=2.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35".
2> Using this version instead of original version "2.3.0.0" in "C:\Users\craig.brett\repos\Admin\WorkersPlus\bin\Craig\WorkersPlus.dll" because AutoUnify is 'true'.
2> Resolved file path is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\.NET SDK\v2.5\ref\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.dll".
...
2> Unified Dependency "Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics, Version=2.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35".
2> Using this version instead of original version "2.3.0.0" in "C:\Users\craig.brett\repos\Admin\WorkersPlus\bin\Craig\WorkersPlus.dll" because AutoUnify is 'true'.
2> Resolved file path is "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\.NET SDK\v2.5\bin\plugins\Diagnostics\Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.dll".
This all looks very suspect to me, when I'm trying to get it to use 2.3. Is there something I need to do to roll back to 2.3? Do I have to uninstall (or attempt to) the Azure 2.5 SDK entirely?

Answer 1

Thanks to Simon Opelt's comment, I went back and did a git diff against the version prior to the update focused on the effected projects.
They revealed that the Azure Caching NuGet package was still at version 2.5, as well as the several sub-libraries of it. There were also a few other Microsoft.* packages that had gone up a few versions. So I used code similar to the following to selectively go through and revert the changes:
git checkout -p <hash of commit prior to Azure upgrade> -- ProjectWorker\ProjectWorker.csproj
git checkout -p <hash of commit prior to Azure upgrade> -- ProjectWorker\packages.config
I took no chances and also rolled back the Azure ServiceBus package.
After this process, things ran fine again! Not quite as easy as it should have been, but at least we're working again and can upgrade at a later date.