ASP.NET MVC2 with Mono 2.6.7 and MonoDevelop 2.6 - asp.net-mvc-2

When I edit my web project references, I can't find the System.Web.MVC2 assembly in the GAC.
That's not what I expected since the Synaptic Package Manager reports that libmono-system-web-mvc2.0-cil package is installed properly.

Assemblies in MonoDevelop's Edit References list are not taken from the GAC. This is also true of VS and .NET. The GAC is only meant to be used at runtime, not compile time.
When targeting Mono, MonoDevelop uses a system called "pkgconfig" for discovering assemblies. When targeting .NET, it uses the same "Assembly Folders" keys in the registry that VS does.
Note that in MD Preferences you can also add additional folders to be searched for pkgconfig files or assemblies - this is intended as an easier alternative to properly installing them onto the system.
Since you use Ubuntu, which breaks Mono into many tiny packages, it's possible that Mono's pkgconfig file for the assembly has been split off into a separate -dev package, so you might try looking for that (though I'm not sure whether 2.6.7 included the pkgconfig file - maybe you'd need 2.8).
Also, MonoDevelop 2.6 does not yet exist - you probably mean 2.4.

Try installing it to the GAC manually.
Not all assemblies need to be in the GAC. There may be a reason the ASP.NET MVC assembly is not installed in the GAC (ease of deployment?)

You are probably missing the libmono-cil-dev package.

Related

NuGet: references to assemblies in runtimes folder not added

I have a project that targets two different operating systems/frameworks:
net461 on Windows and
netcoreapp2.0 on OSX
I'm trying to figure out how to correctly package this for NuGet. According to this post I should be able to package them like this:
/runtimes/win/lib/net461/myassembly.dll
/runtimes/osx/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll
By when I add the NuGet package to another project, the packaged assemblies aren't added as references to the target project.
Then I read somewhere that you also need to add reference libraries to the /ref folder so I tried this:
/runtimes/win/lib/net461/myassembly.dll
/runtimes/osx/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll
/ref/net461/myassembly.dll
/ref/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll
In this case the assemblies get added as a reference to the target project and I can build it, but the required assemblies aren't copied to the output folder.
The documentation on all this is extremely vague and I'm fairly lost.
What am I missing?
Associated NuGet Issue: https://github.com/NuGet/Home/issues/7316
Update: I've put together a sample project that demonstrates what I'm trying to achieve. In particular see the bottom of the readme, titled "NuGet Packaging".
This is what I've finally figured out/guessed (because as best I can tell there's no official documentation for some of this)
Files added to the /runtimes folder aren't automatically added as references to the target project.
The /ref and /runtime folder should be used in conjunction with each other and only for the .NET Core target. As best I can .NET Framework targets apparently don't support these folders.
The /ref folder is for compile time references and anything added here will be added as a reference to the target project.
Assemblies in the /ref folder don't need to have an implementation - every public API could just throw a not implemented exception. In practice however you typically just take a copy of one of the implementation assemblies and declare it as the compile time API.
I've read (but haven't tested myself) that assemblies in the /ref folder must be "Any CPU" builds. You can use CorFlags utility to patch an implementation assembly for this if necessary.
The /runtimes folder is used to provide an implementation assemblies for any references included in the /ref folder. These assemblies are used at runtime and during deployment.
The /runtimes folder can include additional assemblies that are only required at runtime and don't need to be seen by the client project. These additional assemblies won't be included as references in the target project but will be available for run/deployment.
As mentioned by others, the files in the /runtimes folder aren't copied to the output folder of the build. Instead config files are placed there that tell the runtime how to locate the /runtimes files from the NuGet cache.
For .NET Framework targets (ie: net461) just use the /lib folder as there's no other runtimes for .NET aside from Windows anyway.
Putting this all together, my original example, should have looked like this:
/lib/net461/myassembly.dll (net461/Windows Compile and Runtime)
/runtimes/osx/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll (netcore/OSX Runtime)
/runtimes/win/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll (netcore/Win Runtime)
/ref/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly.dll (netcore/* Compile Time)
I spent a fair amount of time trying your project on OSX in both Visual Studio for Mac and VS Code. I'll try to stick with factual observations without getting into "why don't you do X instead".
The runtimes/{rid}/lib/{tfm}/*.dll paths look ok
target="lib/{tfm}/..." assemblies are automatically referenced, runtimes/... are not
Using target framework of netstandard seems like it would make your package work in both netcoreapp and netstandard projects (e.g. use target="lib/netstandard1.6/..."). Compare with this
runtimes/ seems to be intended for platform-dependent assemblies you'll load at runtime. For example, 32/64-bit native assemblies in runtimes/win-x64/native/ and runtimes/win-x86/native/) loaded with AssemblyLoadContext (another post by McMaster)
Using separate slns for Windows and OSX, or separate platform-specific projects that reference platform-agnostic projects (like Xamarin) would obviate some of the configuration wrangling
I found no documentation on target="ref/...", but you can add Explicit Assembly <references> (inside the nuspec <metadata> block)
Packaged assemblies won't appear in the output directory, but when prepared for distribution with dotnet publish they'll be included:
.NET Core and .NETSTANDARD don't copy dependencies to output directory, they are mapped using deps.json which points to relative paths from local NuGet cache.
This has been a very useful thread to get more information and hints on how to create a NuGet package that references native DLLs, and is consumed in both .NET Framework as well as .NET Core / modern .NET libraries / applications.
My experience so far has been that if this library (let's call it library A) only targets .NET Standard, consuming this library in a .NET Core / 5.0 or 6.0 application does lead to the native assemblies being pulled in correctly from the runtimes folder. In a .NET Framework 4.7 application however, this does not appear to be the case. Unless the runtime is explicitly specified when compiling, e.g.:
dotnet build ... --runtime win-x86
When using library A in a .NET Core or .NET 5.0/6.0 application however, this runtime identifier is not required - all runtimes are made available and the right one is selected at runtime.
If you want library A to be consumed in applications that also target .NET Framework, and you don't want the user to have to specify the runtime explicitly, then it seems to be necessary to:
Target both .NET Standard and .NET Framework
Ensure that the native assemblies end up in the following folder structure in the NuGet package:
"lib/{tfm}/..."
While the .NET documentation referenced by tm1 earlier here talks about how to get this to work using nuspec files, it is less clear how to do so in the SDK .csproj format. I managed to do this in the NLoptNet project, see the relevant .csproj file here. Final relevant point (in addition to the two bullets above):
Use "<None Include" rather than "<None Update" to add the native assemblies
So far - this works, but there is one quirk - as you can see here it generates warning MSB3246 when consuming library A in a .NET Framework application. See also this Stack Overflow post. This leads me to believe that maybe the above is not the right approach, and therefore to some questions:
Is this the intended way to consume library A in .NET Core, modern .NET and .NET Framework applications?
Should one always specify the runtime identifier when using dotnet build / dotnet test?
Can you try to target .NET Standard 2.0 instead of net461 and netcoreapp2.0? Libraries built against netstandard2.0 should work with .NET Core 2.0 and .NET Framework 4.6.1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/net-standard
Are you using the new csproj format? If so it has built in support for multiple target frameworks.
For example running dotnet pack against a .csproj file with this content:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<TargetFrameworks>net461;netcoreapp2.1;netstandard2.0</TargetFrameworks>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
will result in a .nupkg that works for .NET Framework 4.6.1, .NET Core 2.1 and .NET Standard 2.0.
Various trick can then be used to include specific parts for each framework depending on what's available.
I'm trying to solve the same problem.
The solution proposed by you works fine, but there is one question ...
The case of Win and net46 is clear. And now I need to add a reference to the assembly in the project for a netcoreapp for the Win and for Linux. The problem is that this is a DIFFERENT assembly with the SAME name. Those my package looks like this:
/lib/net461/myassembly1.dll (net461/Windows Compile and Runtime)
/runtimes/ubuntu/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly2.dll (netcore/Ubuntu Runtime)
/runtimes/win/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly1.dll (netcore/Win Runtime)
/ref/netcoreapp2.0/???
Update: Actually, the myassembly1.dll and myassembly2.dll are both called myassembly.dll. But to show that one is assembled for Windows, and the second one for Linux, I will leave here such a name.
The most interesting thing is that I tried to put any assembly in the folder ref, and it works on both Windows and Linux.
This version works on both systems
/lib/net461/myassembly1.dll
/runtimes/ubuntu/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly2.dll
/runtimes/win/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly1.dll
/ref/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly1.dll
And this too
/lib/net461/myassembly1.dll
/runtimes/ubuntu/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly2.dll
/runtimes/win/lib/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly1.dll
/ref/netcoreapp2.0/myassembly2.dll
But I think this is not right and I was wrong somewhere.

Could not load file or assembly error in .Net Standard 2.0 class library

I have a .NET Standard 2.0 class library project with installed Nuget package System.Data.SqlClient version 4.4.0 and a Windows Form .NET Framework 4.7 project that has a reference to that class library.
Installing the Nuget Package and building the solution is successful. but in runtime every time that the code reaches a method that has any thing from SqlClient assembly inside it (for example an instance from SqlConnection) it gets this error:
Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.SqlClient,
Version=4.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or
one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Considering this question, I assume the problem was also there in the last major version of the Nuget package.
Edit
I downloaded the Nuget package and unzipped it and from \ref\netstandard2.0 folder copied the System.DataSqlClient.dll manually in \bin\Debug folder of my Windows Form Project and now it works. The exact situation also happened with Microsoft.Win32.Registry package. So I was almost convinced that it's my fault and I'm doing something the wrong way, but when I tested it with System.Drawing.Primitive Package it worked perfectly without any need to copy a dll. Now I'm really confused.
I guess you may have figured it out already but hope it would help someone - wasted some time too on this.
So, in order to make everything work you would need to reference System.Data.SqlClient in Windows Form project that is referencing your .NET Standard Library
From that point everything should be working like a charm
As you already mentioned System.Data.SqlClient.dll was not in output directory.
Sounds like .NET Standard Library haven't grabbed with itself dependent library binary. There is nothing like "Copy Local" option in .NET Standard references so I don't see any way to check or set this behavior too
I had same problem.
Solution for me was adding dependecy from nuget for latest System.Data.SqlClient at my .NET Standard Library project.
I had the same problem. The .NETStandard assembly was added as a reference to my WPF project. I needed to make changes in the .csproj of the WPF project.
The solution mentioned in https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/901 fixes it.
Steps:
Edit your core .csproj file in notepad.
Add the below two lines in each that you find in it.
<RestoreProjectStyle>PackageReference</RestoreProjectStyle>
<AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>true</AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>
Clean and rebuild your solution.
I had a similar problem, bindingRedirect helped in my case:
<bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.4.0.0" newVersion="4.4.0.0"/>

Crystal Report Version=11.5.3700.0

Error is:
Could not load file or assembly 'CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Design, Version=11.5.3700.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
My web.config is:
This is a existing project. i already tried to sort out the problem using
http://www.businessobjects.com/jump/xi/crvs2010/us2_default.asp link. but i ineed Version=11.5.3700.0 assembly.
Please give me any solution.
You are compiling against a different version to the one that you are getting from that installation (that one is probably newer). This usually means that you have a version of the dlls in the GAC which is causing compilation to be against those dlls. You probably need to remove the dlls from the GAC and then install the version that you can redistribute on all of the development machines.
On the useful page SAP WIKI it's not clearly visible,
but CR 11.5 R2 SP6 has two assembly versions,
11.5.3300 for .NET 1.1 and 11.5.3700 for .NET 2.0.

Should i go for the EF 4.2 update through nuget or a standalone installer?

I would also like to know how the GAC works when i am using a standalone installer ?
Will it override my existing assembly int the project ?
if i have the express edition vs 2010 which does not have nuget ,how do i best make use of these packages without breaking my existing stuff?
You're asking several different questions here.
Generally, the GAC always overrides the bin folder for a given version of an assembly. However, if the bin assembly has a different version, and your config file points to that version, it will use that instead of the GAC.
With VS Express that doesn't have the NuGet VSIX, using NuGet is definitely a bit harder. You need to get the NuGet command line tool, and run the install command to download packages, which you can then manually reference in your projects.

How do I deploy dlls to a system's GAC and check for their existence on program startup?

Entity Framework references some DLLs.
On one system, they showed up in the GAC which is very convenient.
I can't figure out how I did this. The installer doesn't seem to do this --
The dlls I'm specifically talking about here are:
The core library assembly Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll
The Unity Application Block assembly Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll
The Object Builder assembly Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2.dll
but I guess it applies to any dll one might want to add to the GAC.
Also is there a way to check on program startup whether an assembly even is in the GAC?
Check if is in the GAC:
bool inGac = System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(assemblyName).GlobalAssemblyGac;
To install in gac, there's a question
Methods to programmatically install a .NET assembly into the GAC