Where does the Nuget Get-Project -All | Add-BindingRedirect get its version numbers?

Question

I'm trying to synchronize all of the DLL versions in my solution with many projects. I noted that my app.config contains several assembly binding redirects like so:

  <dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource" publicKeyToken="cc7b13ffcd2ddd51" culture="neutral" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.0.2.1" newVersion="4.0.2.1" />
  </dependentAssembly>

However, as best I can tell via the NuGet package manager, there are no packages that need consolidation and all projects point to version 4.4.1 of that assembly

I tried folowing the advice of this blog post. I deleted all of the binding redirects and attempted to regenerate via:

Get-Project -All | Add-BindingRedirect

According to the NuGet Documentation Add-BindingRedirect should check the projects output path. I am assuming this means the bin folder.

But after cleaning and rebuilding Get-Project -All | Add-BindingRedirect still produces the same redirects in my app.config.

Where does the NuGet Get-Project -All | Add-BindingRedirect get its version numbers?

And where might these incorrect NuGet Package Versions be coming from?

Answer 1

Yes, the Add-BindingRedirect adds <assemblyBinding> tags to the configuration file even after clearing all files in the output folder (seems like the documentation is not accurate in this regard !!).

Apparently Add-BindingRedirect scans all of the referenced DLLs and all of their dependencies, and if it finds any conflicts throughout the dependency tree it generates the required assemblyBindings.

Example

If you have a csproj called "MyProject" which references two DLLs (from two different Nuget Packages)

1. SomePackage.dll
2. AnotherPackage.dll

And both DLLs reference BasePackage.dll, but each one of them references a different version of the BasePackage.dll, for example:

1. SomePackage.dll references BasePackage.dll version 1.
2. AnotherPackage.dll reference BasePackage.dll version 2.

When you run Add-BindingRedirect command, it will scan all the DLLs referenced by "MyProject" and spot this conflict in BasePackage references, then adds something like this to your configuration file.

<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="BasePackage" publicKeyToken="50bd4fe62226aeed" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-2.0.0.0" newVersion="2.0.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
</assemblyBinding>