Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Adding References from Visual Studio to Your Own Assemblies

By default, when you install your own assemblies to the GAC, they will not be visible in the Add Reference dialog in Visual Studio. If you need to add a reference to a custom assembly that was installed to the GAC, follow these steps:

1. Open the Windows Registry Editor (RegEdit.exe).

2. Locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders key.

3. Add a subkey to the key from Step 2, specifying a descriptive name representing the folder where your assemblies reside and a value pointing to that folder. This is an example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\MyAssemblies=“C:\\MyAssemblies”.

Now you can find your assemblies in the ...