Problem adding assembly to the GAC

Administrator

Hi all, I'm new, both to this forum and C# in general :) Not sure if this belongs here or in the Deployment forum, but here goes. I have an assembly that I want to add to the GAC so I can use it in multiple projects. I have successfully given my assembly a strong name and used gacutil to add the dll to the GAC. If I run gacutil /l, the assembly appears in the list. But in Visual Studio, when I try to add a reference to my assembly, it does not appear in the Add Reference dialog box. I have tried both restarting Visual Studio and rebooting the machine to no avail. Sadly, all the help I can find seems to assume that once your assembly is in the GAC, it will appear in the Add Reference dialog automatically. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

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Administrator23y ago
Hi, I found an article on the Microsoft site which told me what I need to know :) Basically I need to add a registry key for my assemblies folder under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NET Framework\AssemblyFolders . The Add Reference dialog will then list any assemblies I have in that folder without me having to browse.
Administrator23y ago
So even though it's in the GAC, I still have to browse to its physical location? Other files in the GAC seem to appear in the Add Reference automatically, without having to browse.
Administrator23y ago
Yes, you cannot browse to Windows\assembly or WinNT\assembly in VS add reference dialog. What you could do is keep all your assemblies that go to the GAC somewhere in a designated place. Then you'll know where to browse when you need to refer to your assembly.