.NET Standard and .NET Framework compatibility

[manu-st]

Hi,

We have been facing the following issues and are not able to work around it without manually copying assemblies.

• Create a console app (with VS2015 Update 3)
• Add a Portable C# library and reference it
• Transform this portable library into a .NET Standard project (version 1.4)
• Add a call to Console.WriteLine(""); in the class created for you in the portable library project.
• Call the Class1 method from the console app
• Run the console application and you will get an exception because it cannot find assemblies referenced by the portable library:

An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in ConsoleApplication1.exe

Additional information: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Console, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this kind of compatibility but we were wondering what does it take to run a .NET Standard library against the .NET Framework.

Thanks,
Manu

[manu-st]

I found a better way instead of copying files around, it seems sufficient to include the NETStandard.Library nuget package (albeit version 1.6) in the console app project and the missing assemblies are copied to the output of the build.

Is this the proper way of proceeding?

[ericstj]

Yep, I assume you're using packages.config in the desktop project? In that case you must manually install nuget packages from all referenced projects in the referencing project. This is a shortcoming of packages.config.

Using NuGet with project.json or the latest tooling (PackageReference in msbuild) will flow those references between projects.

[manu-st]

Initially the desktop project doesn't use packages.config at all. It is only when I add the nuget package that the file is created for me with some content.

Good to know that latest tooling would make this easier.

Thanks!

[jnm2]

@manu-silicon NuGet v3 is very easy to start using in your current project with current tooling. See Oren's awesome guide: https://oren.codes/2016/02/08/project-json-all-the-things/

[dsplaisted]

This looks like the same issue as NuGet/Home#4488

[weshaggard]

@manu-silicon I would suggest using project.json if you are using the older tooling using the Oren's guide that @jnm2 pointed out.

I'm going to assume there isn't anything actionable from this issue for us so I'm closing, but feel free to ask any follow-up questions.

[manu-st]

@weshaggard No problem. Using the project.json works for me in VS. But doing it from msbuild only works if I do a nuget restore project.json before launching the build. In any case, I'm eagerly waiting for the VS 2017 release to smooth things out.

[jnm2]

@manu-silicon You do need a restore, but in the meantime what I do when not building from VS is either TFS build, which by default puts a restore step ahead of the msbuild step, or if I'm building on my machine without VS I use Cake and copy the same logic as TFS build. Cake also gets you set up with a restore step before msbuild.