Visual Studio Hacks

Master Assembly and Project References #2

Chapter 1, Master Projects and Solutions

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13

HACK

The majority of the time this process is as simple as selecting what you want

to reference and then clicking the OK button. However, a better understand-

ing of how references work will help avoid headaches when sharing projects

between users and when working with projects under source control. One of

the most frequent issues that developers encounter when working with

shared solutions and projects is broken references.

Assembly References

The first tab that you see in the Add Reference dialog is the .NET tab, which

lists .NET assemblies you can reference in your application. You can add a

reference to any of these assemblies by simply clicking on the assembly and

then the Select button. You can also use the Browse tab or Browse button to

manually browse the filesystem for an assembly.

How the list is created. The list of assemblies displayed in the .NET tab is

based on a set of directories that is configured through the registry. Visual

Studio generates this list by iterating through the .NET Framework direc-

tory as well as any directories configured in the registry. You can add your

own assembly to this list by adding a key to the registry with the directory

your assembly is located in:

1. Open regedit (click Start

➝ Run, then type regedit).

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE if you want to add the direc-

tory ...