Compile Errors when build configuration changed to production - C# MVC

Question

Have taken over the management of a system written in C# MVC. It's a pretty big project so working my way through it bit by bit to learn what everything does. I've just made my first set of changes to it, and am ready to deploy. To do this I changed the debug mode to production which has have all the correct settings for deployment on the server.

However, when I try to compile the project I get lots of Errors and warnings. Most are to do with the third party NLog library which is used in the project.

The type or namespace name 'NLog' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

I have double checked the using statements which are all okay, and in References there is a reference to NLog. In my handover guide for this project, it states that the NLog.dll should be within the bin folder in the project. Now, if I go into the folder structure of the project, I can see this bin folder which does contain NLog, and other objects that are throwing me errors. However, I cannot see this bin folder at all in the folder structure in Visual Studio, so I'm wondering is this my problem?

If anyone could offer any advice I'd be so grateful.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You shouldn't see the bin folder in the solution explorer, so that's not the problem. My suspicion is that NLog is included in a class library project that is required by some other project in the solution. For some reason, this class library project is not compiling and thus you have this library as well as NLog (which it brings along when it's compiled) not available. I'd make sure that you have NLog included as a reference directly in all projects which directly reference it or have a dependency that references it. Pay particular attention to any test projects, which won't typically get built when you build your production code using the right-click menu build action, but will when you build the entire solution.