Adding a bindingRedirect to a .Net Standard library

Question

I have a .Net Standard library, and I'm getting an error when trying to use one of the dependant libraries, which I believe is down to a version conflict. In an old style .Net Class library, I might add something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-10.0.0.0" newVersion="10.0.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
  </runtime>
</configuration>

But, I obviously can't do that in a Net Standard library; so, my question is, what is the strategy for addressing such issues in the .Net Standard world?

Answer 1

Binding redirects are a .NET framework concept, there are no binding redirects on .NET Standard and .NET Core.

However, an application (the actual .NET Framework or .NET Core application) need to resolve the files to be used. On .NET Core, this is done by generating a deps.json file based on the build input and a .NET Framework application uses binding redirects.

If a binding redirect is necessary, they have to be added to the .NET Framework application (or library) that used the .NET Standard library.

These binding redirects can be configured to be automatically generated during build, based on the assemblies used during compilation, see the documentation on automatic binding redirects. When using NuGet's new PackageReference style of using NuGet packages, this is done automatically. Since configuring this correctly varies based on the project type, refer to the announcement Issues with .NET Standard 2.0 with .NET Framework & NuGet for detailed descriptions.

The simplest way to make sure that the correct binding redirects are used is to ensure the .NET Framework app or library sets these properties (inside the csproj/vbproj. The second one is not needed for projects that generate .exe executables but needed for unit test projects):

<PropertyGroup>
    <AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>true</AutoGenerateBindingRedirects>
    <GenerateBindingRedirectsOutputType>true</GenerateBindingRedirectsOutputType>
</PropertyGroup>