Thursday, March 19, 2015

Global Assembly Cache Browser for Visual Studio Projects

I recently had to install the Crystal Reports Runtime from here: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-7824

However, when I installed the 64-bit version of the Runtime, I could not find the assemblies in the recommended location: http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/BOBJ/Which+Crystal+Reports+assembly+versions+are+supported+in+which+versions+of+Visual+Studio+.NET

When I looked in the Global Assembly Cache, sure enough, those assemblies were there!

Of course, there are published workarounds such as this to copy assemblies from the GAC: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnwpowell/archive/2009/01/14/how-to-copy-an-assembly-from-the-gac.aspx

However, SharpDevelop provides a much nicer solution than that!

Once you create a SharpDevelop solution and attempt to add a reference, you will see a dialog similar to this:


This allows you to make references to your necessary assemblies in your project and then just change the Assembly Reference Properties to "Local copy" to True.

Finally build your project and all of your necessary assemblies will be in your bin folder!!  Voila!!

If you wish that Microsoft Visual Studio provided a feature similar to SharpDevelop, you should vote for this UserVoice item here: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/4959496-provide-a-gac-assembly-browser-similar-to-sharpdev



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