csproj

VS2017 has so far correctly converted several project.json / .xproj based projects to the new .csproj format. I would also like to use the new .csproj format with older .csproj projects that previously targeted only .NET Framework (i.e. they didn't work with dnx/dotnet CLI). It seems that even if a project would still only target .NET Framework, the benefits of <PackageReference> and an easily editable .csproj file seem worth the (hopefully not too great) trouble. Is this possible to do with Visual Studio 2017 directly? If not, what manual steps would be required? Mark I'm editing my answer to

With the move from project.json to the new csproj format introduced with VS2017, I'm struggling to understand the difference between the dotnet cli and the new msbuild and when to use one over the other. 1) To build a new csproj netstandard library from the command line, should I be calling the dotnet cli (for example dotnet restore dotnet build ) or use msbuild (for example msbuild ExampleNetstandard.sln ). 2) Also, my understanding is that there are two versions of msbuild , one built on the full framework and another targeting dotnet core . Is this correct? Should I always use the dotnet

I am using VS2010 and I tried to add a few assemblies from local hard disk to my C# project through file reference. Peeking into the csproj file, I found sometimes the file reference appears as <Reference Include="name"> However sometimes it appears as <Reference Include="name, Version=xxx, Culture=neutral, processorArchitecture=MSIL"> What could cause the difference? Inspired by k3b's answer, I did another test. I created a new class library project. Add a file reference. The initial value of Specific Version in Properties pane is False . The csproj file look like <Reference Include="Name">

Does anyone know of a way to programmatically read the list of References in a VS2008 csproj file? MSBuild does not appear to support this functionality. I'm trying to read the nodes by loading the csproj file into an XmlDocument but, the XPath search does not return any nodes. I'm using the following code: System.Xml.XmlDocument projDefinition = new System.Xml.XmlDocument(); projDefinition.Load(fullProjectPath); System.Xml.XPath.XPathNavigator navigator = projDefinition.CreateNavigator(); System.Xml.XPath.XPathNodeIterator iterator = navigator.Select(@"/Project/ItemGroup"); while (iterator

I am for sure missing some important detail here. I just cannot make .NET's XPath work with Visual Studio project files. Let's load an xml document: var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.Load("blah/blah.csproj"); Now execute my query: var nodes = doc.SelectNodes("//ItemGroup"); Console.WriteLine(nodes.Count); // whoops, zero Of course, there are nodes named ItemGroup in the file. Moreover, this query works: var nodes = doc.SelectNodes("//*/@Include"); Console.WriteLine(nodes.Count); // found some With other documents, XPath works just fine. I am absolutely puzzled about that. Could anyone explain