The component does not have a resource identified by the uri

Question

I want to create a Generic DataGrid to use on all my Views/UserControls.

This is my structure:

Class Library called \"Core\":

Answer 1

Same problem here.

Short version:

Copy Local has to be set to False!

Long version:

We developed a WPF solution (MVVM, 20 projects) and implemented a plug-in system. Our /bin/Debug directory contains the executable, some dll files and a plugin directory that contains the plugins. There is one project "DialogLib" (Class library, kind of dialog) that defines a window (the view), the ViewModel, Model and some interfaces. One of the plugins used one of the interfaces of DialogLib. The window itself is opened by the main application.

To use the interface of the 'DialogLib' library in the plugin we had to add a project reference of DialogLib to the plugins project references. When the application was started, the plugins were loaded. If the user then selects a menu item, the window should open. At this point the error "... component does not have a resource identified by the URI ..." occured when the windows code behind tried to execute its InitializeComponent().

Where's the problem?

The problem is, that, when we built the solution VS has created the DialogLib.dll correctly and copied it to /bin/Debug/. This is because the main application file wants to open the window. But DialogLib.dll was also copied to /bin/Debug/plugins because one of the plugins referenced it to use one of the interfaces defined in DialogLib.dll. So what?

When the plugin is loaded at runtime it uses the interface defined in /bin/Debug/plugins/DialogLib.dll. and the main application file tries to open the window defined in /bin/Debug/DialogLib.dll. Although the files are identical, VS runs into trouble. Setting the value of Copy Local of the DialogLib reference properties of the plugins references avoids copying DialogLib.dll to /bin/Debug/plugins and thus solves the problem.

We had a similar same problem (but different error) in another project where we wanted to use a type TypeA, that was defined in a dll file, in a plugin and in the main application. Copy Local was set to true which caused a copy of the dll file to be located in ../bin/Debug/plugins and in ../bin/Debug/. It turned out that, even though it was the same dll file, the TypeA in the main app file and TypeA in the plugin were treated as different types respectively as types which could not be exchanged.