Error "Metadata file '...\Release\project.dll' could not be found in Visual Studio"

visual-studio debugging release resolveassemblyreference
nightcoder picture nightcoder · May 22, 2009 · Viewed 188.6k times · Source

Recently I started to get this message randomly:

Metadata file '...\Release\project.dll' could not be found in Visual Studio

I have a solution with several projects in it. The current build mode is Debug and all projects' configurations are set to Debug. But when I try to run the main project - sometimes it gives me a few errors, all of which are "Metadata file '...\Release\projectX.dll' could not be found" - and, look, it says about RELEASE folder, though current mode is Debug. Why? I tried to search for reference to "Release\projectX.dll" inside all solution files, and I found one in ResolveAssemblyReference.cache file.

I made a good search over the Internet and found a few people with a similar problem, but there was no solution, or at least no working solution.

I tried to delete references to those projects and read them, but in some time I start getting these errors again.

It seems like a bug. Why does it search for referenced projects in Release folders when I always use Debug mode?

PS. For those who met this problem: I couldn't solve it in an easy way. It disappeared only after I reinstalled Windows :(

Answer

beauXjames picture beauXjames · Oct 23, 2012

Everyone is correct...try everything...(in order of a little to a lot of time wasted)

  1. Do you have bad code? Fix that first.
  2. Clean Solution & Restart Visual Studio
  3. Remove / Add References
  4. Check your build order w/ larger projects and verify
  5. Manually rebuild sub-projects
  6. Manually copy dlls between projects into associated bin folders
  7. Go get some coffee, play some pinball and come back tomorrow...you may think of something else in the meanwhile.

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