Auto resolving references' path on project

Question

I think I have misunderstood something about Visual Studio's project references or SVN:externals - maybe both :) -.

The fact is that I have three projects:

• A has no references itself
• B refers to A's DLL, checked out via SVN:externals when updated (to somewhere inside the project's directory).
• C, when updated, checks out (via SVN:externals) A's and B's DLLs to a directory inside the project (let's say path.to.project.C\Libraries\A and path.to.project.C\Libraries\B)

On project C, when I add A's DLL as a reference from path path.to.project.C\Libraries\A, Visual Studio takes path.to.project.C\Libraries\B as its path. Seems to me that is omitting my choice and auto-resolving A's DLL on the wrong path.

With this configuration I:

• update some A's code, compile project, and commit the DLL to repository.
• update from repository project C.
• C project ends up using an out-of-date version of A's DLL (as it searchs for A's DLL on project B's files checked out from subversion. Those, at this moment, are not updated with last changes).

Any hint would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I was doing similar research today, and found your un-answered question. Here's some links that might help:

“References Path” of the “Property Pages Dialog Box”

Lists the directories that contain assemblies that you browsed for in the Add Reference dialog box. The settings for this property are specific to the project, computer, and user for which it was set; this information will not be stored in the project settings. However, this property is automatically written and saved to the "per-user" file (.user) for your project whenever you save your project or close it without saving.

“Troubleshooting Broken References”

This page explains more of how to use the “Reference Path” of the “Property Pages Dialog Box”, but recommends using “Project to Project” references. With BizTalk, we have opted to use Project-to-Project references only within an application, such as FRB.EC.BookTransfer. If FRB.EC.BookTransfer needs to access FRB.EC.Common, then we make a relative disk reference to the \Binaries folder.