Visual Studio: Relative Assembly References Paths

Question

When adding a reference to an assembly located within the solution directory, is there any way to add it relatively, so that when checked in and out of a repository it is referenced in projects correctly?

Answer 1

To expand upon Pavel Minaev's original comment - The GUI for Visual Studio supports relative references with the assumption that your .sln is the root of the relative reference. So if you have a solution C:\myProj\myProj.sln, any references you add in subfolders of C:\myProj\ are automatically added as relative references.

To add a relative reference in a separate directory, such as C:/myReferences/myDLL.dll, do the following:

1. Add the reference in Visual Studio GUI by right-clicking the project in Solution Explorer and selecting Add Reference...
2. Find the *.csproj where this reference exist and open it in a text editor

3. Edit the < HintPath > to be equal to

   <HintPath>..\..\myReferences\myDLL.dll</HintPath>

This now references C:\myReferences\myDLL.dll.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Yes, just create a directory in your solution like lib/, and then add your dll to that directory in the filesystem and add it in the project (Add->Existing Item->etc). Then add the reference based on your project.

I have done this several times under svn and under cvs.

Answer 3

Probably, the easiest way to achieve this is to simply add the reference to the assembly and then (manually) patch the textual representation of the reference in the corresponding Visual Studio project file (extension .csproj) such that it becomes relative.

I've done this plenty of times in VS 2005 without any problems.

Answer 4

In VS 2017 it is automatic. So just Add Reference as usually.

Note that in Reference Properties absolute path is shown, but in .vbproj/.csproj relative is used.

<Reference Include="NETnetworkmanager">
      <HintPath>..\..\libs\NETnetworkmanager.dll</HintPath>
      <EmbedInteropTypes>True</EmbedInteropTypes>
</Reference>

Answer 5

As mentioned before, you can manually edit your project's .csproj file in order to apply it manually.

I also noticed that Visual Studio 2013 attempts to apply a relative path to the reference hintpath, probably because of an attempt to make the project file more portable.