I created a custom WinForms control. When I added reference to the control's project for any project in the same solution, the control appeared in a WinForms designer toolbox and I can use it.
But I have problem to use it as an external library.
I built it and got a DLL file. When I add reference to the DLL file for a project, the control doesn't show in the toolbox. I tried also add it by "right click toolbox => choose items...", but I have an error: "'path to dll' targets a platform whose toolbox items cannot be enumerated dynamically".
Visual Studio 2022 Community .Net 6
I found the "answer" here: link
The only solution is workaround: Putting your controls in a NuGet package and referencing that
We have existing API that includes UI controls (both WinForms and WPF) dll that shipped with our product. it is in use by our clients for a while for 32bit.
Recentaly, our customers moved to 64bit versions and we're trying to provide support for developers with 64bit version, as Visual studio is 32bit process, and our controls dll has depenencies with native 64bit dlls. our controls cannot be loaded/displayed in toolbox/designer.
In order to solve this problem. I changed the output type of the controls dll to be AnyCPU, also wrapped any references to a lower native dlls in order to prevent exceptions when dragging controls to designer, or when loading existing forms/windows.
and indeed, its solves the problem of dragging controls to designer/loading existing forms/windows. but that's because I have already loaded controls in the toolbox, from previous 32 bit version.
We still have a problem loading the controls to the toolbox (Toolbox->Choose Items)
in VS2010 - cannot add at all, the failure is due to lower native dll that cannot be load.
in VS2012 - Winforms controls are able to be loaded (sometimes only after the second time),
WPF controls NOT being able to be load at all.
Does anyone understand the loading dll mechanism of Visual Studio?
Any other suggestion/workaround?
Unfortunately, it seems that VS will try to load any referenced DLLs including C++ ones when adding .Net DLLs to toolbox, even if we will never request lower DLLs resources in designer run-time,
The workaround we use - supplying also the 32bit dlls version of our controls framework, the one that are referenced by the .Net dlls.
open a project, add reference to the 64bit version of your application.
open toolbox, add dlls, now refer to the 32bit version.
I wrote a control library using visual studio 2010, I'll call it MyLibrary. MyLibrary references another control library I have that we'll call AnotherLibrary. I also have a clean virtual machine (CVM) and I've added AnotherLibrary to the GAC on the CVM. Using the CVM, I create a new WinForms project, add MyLibrary.dll to the toolbox, and drop one of the controls onto the form. Visual Studio will add MyLibrary.dll AND AnotherLibrary.dll to the references, even though AnotherLibrary.dll is in the GAC (and isn't needed). I can remove AnotherLibrary.dll from the references and everything is fine.
Is there a way to prevent visual studio from adding AnotherLibrary.dll in this scenario?
Edit: I've given this some thought and I have an example. When you add a TabControl to a parent control in the designer, visual studio won't add System.Design to the references, even though the TabControl depends on it. So, surely there is a way to do this?
You still need the reference. Just like you need the reference to, say, System.dll which is also in the GAC. You just don't need the copy of the assembly in your bin\Debug directory. That you happened to not break the compiler by removing the reference is possible, especially since is this is an indirectly used assembly. But some odds that you'll eventually run out of luck.
In general you really want to avoid using the GAC on your dev machine. Because you care about specific versions of an assembly when you, say, create a bug fix. You get those specific versions from source control, not the GAC.
Doesn't it make sense that it would automatically include all dependencies? It cannot assume that AnotherLibrary is in the GAC on every machine you might want to deploy your code on. Of course as you mentioned you can manually remove it....
We are the providing custom controls for all platforms in Visual Studio .Net. We are adding assemblies into ToolboxControlsInstaller and Register the assemblies in AssemblyFoldersEx under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework. When use the Add reference (to add assemblies C# projects) for Windows Phone Projects, it shows all platform assemblies from GAC like MVC, Windows and WPF. Is there any possible to filter assemblies and show only phone assemblies for Windows Phone Projects. Please help me to resolve the issue. Thanks in advance.
Try using the Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio!
It replaces the default "Add Reference" dialog with a better one, and on top, shows that it is filtering the references by platform!
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight for WindowsPhone\v4.0\AssemblyFoldersEx
If we create a new Key under the above registry location then set the Assemblies location as default value. Then put what are the assemblies we want to add in Add Reference tab in that location. It will resolve this issue.
I just wondered if it possible within various Visual Studio versions to automatically remove all references from a project that were never been used?
In your answer, please specify which version of VS the solution applies to.
If you have Resharper (plugin) installed, you can access a feature that allows you to analyze used references via Solution Explorer > (right click) References > Optimize References...
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/webhelp/Refactorings__Remove_Unused_References.html
This feature does not correctly handle:
Dependency injected assemblies
Dynamically loaded assemblies (Assembly.LoadFile)
Native code assemblies loaded through interop
ActiveX controls (COM interop)
Other creative ways of loading assemblies
All you need is stone and bare knuckle then you can do it like a caveman.
Remove unused namespaces (for each class)
Run Debug build
Copy your executable and remaining namespace references to new location
Run the executable
Missing Reference DLL error will occur
Copy required DLL from Debug folder
Repeat 4-6
Gu Gu Ga Ga?
Throw your stone
You can also rely on your build tools to let you know which reference is still required. It's the era of VS 2017, caveman still survived.
The Resharper extension will do this for you.
This extension supports Visual Studio 2005 through 2017.
While the compiler won't include unused assemblies, extraneous using statements and references slows down Visual Studio and Intellisense, since there's more code the tools have to consider.
You can try the free VS2010 extension: Reference Assistant by Lardite group. It works perfectly for me. This tool helps to find unused references and allows you to choose which references should be removed.
In a Visual Basic project there is support to remove "Unused References" (Project-->References-->Unused References). In C# there isn´t such a function.
The only way to do it in a C# project (without other tools) is to remove possible unused assemblies, compile the project and verify if any errors occur during compilation. If none errors occur you have removed a unused assembly. (See my post)
If you want to know which project (assembly) depends on other assemblies you can use NDepend.
With Visual Studio versions 2017 and 2015, you can do this with the Code Map feature, but this feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition, not the Community or Professional versions.
Right-click on the project node in the solution explorer and select 'Show on Code Map.' This will display your .dll as a single node in a blank graph. Right-click on that node in the Code Map and select "Show Assemblies This References." This will add an additional node called "Externals" which can be expanded to show only the assemblies that are actually referenced.
For Visual Studio 2013/2015/2017 there is an extension that does exactly what you want: ResolveUR. What this basically does is:
reference is removed in the project
project is compiled with msbuild
check for build errors
restore removed references if there were build errors.
For anybody coming here looking for Visual studio 2012:
Download and Install Reference Assistant for Visual Studio 11
Later you can do:
In Visual Studio 2013 this extension works:
ResolveUR
Some people suggested to use an awesome tool - Reference Assistant for Visual Studio. The problem is that VS2012 is the latest supported Visual Studio. But there is the way to make it work in VS2013 as well ;)
And here is how:
1) Download Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix
2) Change the extension to zip: Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix -> Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.zip
3) Unzip and open the extension.vsixmanifest file in the text editor
4) Find all occurences of InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0)" and replace them with InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0]" (note the closing bracket)
5) Save the file and zip all files so they are on the root zip level
6) Change the extension of the new zip to vsix
7) Install and enjoy :)
I've tested it with VS2013, thanks source for the tutorial
EDIT
Add to support VS 2015 Community Edition
<InstallationTarget Version="[14.0,15.0]" Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" />
Meaning of the brackets
[ – minimum version inclusive.
] – maximum version inclusive.
( – minimum version exclusive.
) – maximum version exclusive.
[Update] This feature is only available for .Net core projects.
This feature will be coming to Visual Studio 2019 very soon and already available with Visual Studio 2019 v16.10 Preview 1.
This option is turned off by default, but you can enable it under menu Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Advanced. Select the Remove Unused References command in Solution Explorer (Experimental). Once the option is enabled, the Remove Unused References command will appear in the right-click menu of a project name or dependencies node.
You can use Reference Assistant extension from the Visual Studio extension gallery.
Used and works for Visual Studio 2010.
In the VS2022 (preview at the moment of writing) this comes out of the box for SDK Style Projects (read: .NET Core and newer).
If it is available you can find it in the project context menu:
You get to choose what to do with each finding.
Read more about it here.
Pro-tip: Check if your project compiles and runs correctly after applying this. In my experience it doesn't check whether a dependency is used at runtime, for instance.
Using DevExpress, I follow these instructions:
In VS, go to DevExpress - Editor - Code Cleanup. Under Rules, check 'Remove unused namespace references'. Click OK.
Right-click on the solution, and choose 'Code Cleanup'. The cleanup runs for a few minutes, and finishes.
Build your application
The following method does not depend on any 'add-on's and is not very painful.
Step through each of your source files and
Select all (Ctrl-A)
Toggle outline expansion (Ctrl-M, M). This will reduce the file to two lines.
Click on the namespace's '+'. This will show each of the file's classes as a single line. Scan each class's reference count, looking for unreferenced classes.
Click on each of the classes' '+'. This will show each of the class functions as a single line. Scan each function's reference count, looking for unreferenced functions.
Scanning each file looking for '0 reference' takes only a second.
Scanning an entire project takes only a couple of minutes.
In VB2008, it works this way:
Project>Add References
Then click on the Recent tab where you can see list of references used recently. Locate the one you do not want and delet it. Then you close without adding anything.