This is a very uncommon problem and there are definetly many workarounds, but I would like to understand what is actually going on and why it's not working.
So I have 3 assemblies in a test solution, first assembly has type ClassA:
public class ClassA
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
Second assembly references first assembly and has ClassB:
public class ClassB
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public static explicit operator ClassA(ClassB objB)
{
return new ClassA
{
Name = objB.Name
};
}
}
which has an explicit operator to cast to type ClassA. Let's say that we cannot use inheritance for some reason and just using casting as a convenient way of transforming one type to another.
Now, the last assembly references second assembly (and not the first one!) and has type ClassC:
public class ClassC
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public static explicit operator ClassB(ClassC objC)
{
return new ClassB
{
Name = objC.Name
};
}
}
which uses explicit cast operator for same reason as ClassB.
Now the interesting part: if I try to cast from ClassC to ClassB in my code, like this:
ClassC objC = new ClassC();
ClassB objB = (ClassB)objC;
I get the following error:
Error 1 The type 'FirstAssembly.ClassA' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'FirstAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'.
I could easily create new instance of ClassB and just initialize it with values from ClassC instance (like I do inside explicit cast operator), and it would work fine. So what is wrong here?
