Xamarin.iOS project: CS1703: Multiple assemblies with equivalent identity have been imported

Question

I've got a cross platform (iOS and Android) Xamarin solution using .NET Standard 2.0. The solution is being built by Visual Studio 2017 (I've tried both the current and preview versions). The Forms and Android projects build fine. However, the iOS fails to build, with the following error:

1>CSC : error CS1703: Multiple assemblies with equivalent identity have been imported: 'C:\Users\newuser.nuget\packages\system.reflection.emit\4.3.0\ref\netstandard1.1\System.Reflection.Emit.dll' and 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Preview\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\Microsoft\Framework\Xamarin.iOS\v1.0\Facades\System.Reflection.Emit.dll'. Remove one of the duplicate references.

I've tried many work arounds as described here:

oren.codes

www.hanselman.com

github.com/NuGet

Unfortunately none of these suggestions work. I have also tried to add the System.Reflection.Emit nuget package directly to the Forms and/or to the iOS projects directly. This doesn't work either. Note that originally, the The System.Reflection.Emit package wasn't referenced directly by anything in the solution. It is being pulled in by the following nuget packages which are being explicitly referenced:

• Acr.DeviceInfo (5.0.5)
• akavache (6.0.0-alpha0038)
• AutoMapper (6.2.2)
• Microsoft.Identity.Client (1.1.1-preview0040)
• Newtonsoft.Json (10.0.3)

Finally, I have tried the update-package -reinstall command in the package console to reinstall all packages for the iOS project. This doesn't work either.

-- update

Just to make this clear, neither the Xamarin Forms or the Xamarin iOS project directly reference System.Reflection.Emit. That package is being pulled in as a dependency of other nuget packages, just from packages that are installed into the Xamarin Forms project. I have confirmed all of the dependencies that are referenced by Nuget, are using the same version. See these screenshots:

It seems to me that the problem (as the error says) is that there is an old version of System.Reflection.Emit that was installed by Visual Studio. However, I can't find a way of ignoring it and using the version of System.Reflection.Emit instead. As I've said above, I have tried to use a project.json file in the Xamarin.iOS project, and manually ignoring, but this doesn't work.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

As an aside, I notice that this bug is still open for Xamarin.

Xamarin Bugs

Answer 1

Managed to get this resolved thanks to an answer by @DirkWilhem on Xamarin Forums site.

Basically, add this to your Xamarin iOS project's .csproj file, with the other PackageReference nodes:

<PackageReference Include="System.Reflection.Emit">
  <Version>4.3.0</Version>
  <ExcludeAssets>all</ExcludeAssets>
</PackageReference>

Of course you need to make sure the nuget package has been added to the iOS package first.

Xamarin Forums discussion

Answer 2

After spending hours trying to resolve this myself I may have found a solution. Although it does feel wrong, it has got me past the issue.

Moving/Deleting the Xamarin.iOS version of System.Reflection.Emit.dll has solved the build problem for me and enabled me to deploy and run my app on a device. I don’t know what side effects it might have so will need more testing but I thought I’d share what’s worked for me so you can test it as well.

I was running on macOS Visual Studio 2017 but switched over to Windows to try and fix and first fixed on there then tried same approach on macOS and it worked as well.

On windows, go into the following directory and move the System.Reflection.Emit.dll somewhere else (you could just straight up delete it but I wanted to keep a copy I case this has some undesired effects down the track):

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\Microsoft\Framework\Xamarin.iOS\v1.0\Facades

On mac the following directory has it:

/Library/Frameworks/Xamarin.iOS.framework/Versions/Current/lib/mono/Xamarin.iOS/Facades

Like I say, it feels wrong but for now it’s got me past an issue that’s had me blocked for a couple of days so willing to just move on and hope there’s no side effects. I’d be interested to know your experience with it and if you come across anything else for the future too.

I’ll post this same comment on the Xamarin forums post (https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/120814/xamarin-ios-project-cs1703-multiple-assemblies-with-equivalent-identity-have-been-imported) as well for future reference.