MVC 5 on Mono: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Entity' or one of its dependencies

Question

Goal: Startup a ASP.NET MVC 5 project on Mono via Xamarain Studio.

Error after starting server: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Entity' or one of its dependencies.

Error in Xamarin Studio:

Background: The project was created in Visual Studio 2013 as a default web project. Most of the configuration is out of the box. Code for it can be viewed here on GitHub. I have the latest and greatest Mono and Xamarin Studio as of writing. The .NET Entity Framework is a resolved dependency and there are no build issues noted in Xamarin Studio.

How do I get this project up and running? How do I resolve this dependency?

Answer 1

I know this is an old thread, but I ran across this while starting to port over an MVC project from VS for windows to VS for Mac. I found a better solution was to delete the reference to System.Web.Entity, and add the NuGet package System.Web.Http.Common. Hope it helps.

Answer 2

I was able to work around this problem by getting the System.Web.Entity.dll file from my Windows box. I found mine in C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.5.1\.

Once I copied that to the bin folder of my project on my Mac, and updated the reference to include a HintPath...

<Reference Include="System.Web.Entity" >   <HintPath>..\bin\System.Web.Entity.dll</HintPath> </Reference> 

the project would build in Xamarin Studio. It still showed the red X next to the reference (yes, even if I specified that it was a local copy and added a HintPath), but at least it could find it.

I ended up getting another error about being unable to load System.Drawing.BitmapSuffixInSameAssemblyAttribute, but hey, small progress!