Successful Visual Studio C# build does not create assembly

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2005, .NET 2.0

I am not really sure yet under what circumstances it happens, but here is the scenario: I have a solution with a project structure like this: A library project Foo, a library project Bar which references Foo, and a library project Quux which references Foo and Bar.

Compiling fails with the Error message "Metadata file 'Foo.dll' could not be found" from Bar, and "Metadata file 'Foo.dll' could not be found" and "Metadata file 'Bar.dll' could not be found" from Quux.

Looking in my target directory (I have a combined target directory for all 3 projects), it is empty, so no project at all is compiled. Now I can get that Bar and Quux fail if there is no output from Foo. Problem is: Why does Foo silently fail? There is no error from it, and just building Foo instead of the entire solution works fine.

The "funny" thing is, after just pushing the build button again, the Foo.dll file appears, Bar no longer complains but does not produce any output file either, and Quux complains about missing Bar.dll. Pushing the button again, the Bar.dll appears, there are no more errors but no Quux.dll. Only after pushing the button yet again, the Quux.dll appears, once again with no errors.

The project dependencies are all set correctly, the solution build order says exactly the right thing.

I have even tried creating a new solution and new project files, then adding the sources again to those. No joy, either. Same thing happens.

I am completely stumped. Does anyone know a way out of this mess?

Answer 1

You should have separate output directory for each project. Each time a project builds, it clears the output directory, so it won't find any dependencies on the next one.

Don't fear losing any DLLs, they'll be copied on each bin directory where they are needed.

Answer 2

I think a work around to your problem could be using post build events that deletes previous version of your dlls and copies the new ones to your combined target directory.

When you set up the three projects to work this way, you will find that you are compiling each project to it's correspondent bin folder and to a combined target directory. There is a second thing you should do if you decide to work with this, set up for each project in your solution a reference path pointing to the combined target directory. Compiling order must still exist.

This way each project dll will be found in the combined target directory, each time you compile.

Although, this solution has it's own problems such as when a post-build event forgets to wrok properly; but it's rare.

Hope this helps