MsBuild: Changing References from ProjectReference to Reference

Question

In our environment, we have two in-house frameworks and a separate website. During development, the references to the in-house frameworks tend to be set tp project references. However, once we move to release, the in-house frameworks are installed into the GAC as they are used for multiple instances of the website on each server. All of the ProjectReferences are changed, by hand, to References and the website assemblies and website are re-compiled and deployed.

I am attempting to automate this process. What is the best way to handle these issues? I have started to learn MsBuild in the attempt to accomplish this, but am totally confused. Any pointers and/or suggestions on how to proceed?

Answer 1

As far as I am aware there shouldn't be any need to change from using project references to file references simply because the assembly is registered in the GAC - as long as the referenced project is strongly typed at the point that it is built, the reference should still be valid.

Clarification:

There is no fundamental difference between a GAC reference and a file reference - if you have a reference to a strongly named assembly, and that assembly is placed in the GAC then the end application will load that assembly from the GAC.

See this link for more information on how the runtime locates referenced assemblies:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yx7xezcf(VS.71).aspx

FYI - I believe it is recommended that you don't reference assemblies which are in physically in the GAC, and that you instead reference the strongly named assembly before it is placed in the GAC (not to be confused with whether or not the assembly should be installed to the GAC on the end-user machine)

Answer 2

If you leave the project references in, MSBUILD will copy all the project references as DLLs into the target website's bin directory, even though you've installed these DLLs into the GAC, which I assume is why you want to change this at the release level--so that space can be saved.

I also assume that you are intending to do this at the Release Branch only, and not at the development branch of your source control. Because if you are doing this at all branches of source control, then doing by hand is actually the best and fastest way of doing this for a one-time change.

To do this in MSBUILD, you will need to create a custom task that can modify the project file. The project file is an XML file, so you could use XPath as your custom task in MSBUILD. In the project file, you will find tags for "" to your referenced projects. You will need to change those to "" tags instead. Use existing examples of the tag in your project to see how it should look

Sorry I don't have sample code for this--doing it this way will be a bit of an undertaking, as there will be a number of things to take into consideration, and it might end up not being feasible.