Reason for "Cannot resolve dependency to assembly" error

Question

When would the following message be shown?

Error 1 Unknown build error, 'Cannot resolve dependency to assembly 'Infragistics2.Win.v10.3, Version=10.3.20103.2015, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7dd5c3163f2cd0cb' because it has not been preloaded. When using the ReflectionOnly APIs, dependent assemblies must be pre-loaded or loaded on demand through the ReflectionOnlyAssemblyResolve event.'

I have added few DLLs to an existing working project. I know it's difficult to pin point the reason without the details on the code-base, but what I would like to know the general cause for such error messages to appear?

Note: Just created a fresh WPF project and added the bunch of new DLLs. The issue is present there also. Therefore, it's highly likely that the issue is due to organization and content of the DLLs.

Answer 1

This can happen if your xaml file statically references a view model class and that view model class has a dependency which may not be recognised as missing in the xaml file. You will need to add that dependency to the offending project. Because it is referenced in the xaml file compile time errors aren't clear on the source of the problem.