Add Reference to .NET 4.5.1 class library project from ASP.NET 5 web app not working

[johnciliberti]

I am running the RC of Visual Studio Enterprise on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Virtual Machine. Folder that solution is added to is part of a git repo.
Steps to reproduce:

1. Create new Web Application Project with ASP.NET 5 Starter Web Template
2. Add an existing .NET 4.5.1 class library project to the solution. Project includes a reference to EF 6.1.3
3. Add the class library project as a reference in the web application project.

Results:

1. A reference is added to the project.json file in the web project
   "frameworks": {
   "dnx451": {
   "dependencies": {
   "Recipe05.Dal": "1.0.0-*"
   }
   }
2. In the class library project a wrap directory is created with the folders:

• EntityFramework
  • EntityFramework.SqlServer
  • Recipe05.Dal
    each folder has it's own project.json file with a bin configuration
    "bin": {
    "assembly": "../../obj/{configuration}/Recipe05.Dal.dll",
    "pdb": "../../obj/{configuration}/Recipe05.Dal.pdb"
    }
  • In the web project package restore fails with the following error:
    Error NuGet Package Restore failed for one or more packages. See details in the Output window.
    Restoring packages for C:\MVC6Recipes\MVC6Recipes\Chapter06\Recipe05\src\Recipe05.Dal\wrap\Recipe05.Dal\project.json
    GET https://www.nuget.org/api/v2/FindPackagesById()?Id='Recipe05.Dal'.
    OK https://www.nuget.org/api/v2/FindPackagesById()?Id='Recipe05.Dal' 1081ms
    Unable to locate Recipe05.Dal >= 1.0.0

[davidfowl]

Can you show your solution layout? From the error, it looks like it can't figure out what kind of reference Recipe05.Dal is. What does the ICON show in visual studio? Is it yellow?

[johnciliberti]

Yes. I get the yellow warning icon when I drill into references.

One thing that seems off is that in the wrap directory
"frameworks": {
"net451":

not
"dnx451"

Changing this has no effect however.

[davidfowl]

You missed my first question. what is your solution layout. Do you have more than one global.json in your project structure? It looks like things were adding in the wrong place and the ASP.NET 5 project can't figure out the project references.

[johnciliberti]

There is two global.json files but only one appeared in the solution explorer. The one in the class library project only had:
{
"projects": [
"wrap"
]
}

Interesting, if I create the ASP.NET 5 project first, then create a NEW class library project as part of the ASP.NET solution it seems to work fine.

If I include an existing library created as part of another solution, I run into issues. Does not seem to matter where the location of the referenced class library is.

Seems like in the latter case the wrap command is adding a global.json file to the class library project. This could be because I am adding a reference to a project that was created in another solution. Wrap command sees a solution folder without a global.json so it adds one.

[davidfowl]

1. Add an existing .NET 4.5.1 class library project to the solution. Project includes a reference to EF 6.1.3

That project is where on disk?

On again, can you post the solution layout at each step? I'd like to be able to reproduce this but the steps still look too vague.

[johnciliberti]

I had tried it several ways. Bold indicates a solution folder, italic project folder:

1. Causes issue

Shared Library

MVC6Recipes/Shared/Mvc6Recipes.Shared.DataAccess/Mvc6Recipes.Shared.DataAccess

ASP.NET 5 Project

MVC6Recipes/Chapter06/Recipe05/src/Recipe05.Web

2. This fails also

Dal solution was created first. Closed solution. Created new Web Solution. In this case, two solution files in same directory.
MVC6Recipes/Chapter06/Recipe05/Recipe05.Dal

ASP.NET 5 Project

MVC6Recipes/Chapter06/Recipe05/src/Recipe05.Web

3. This works Fine

In this case I had created the web app first then created the library. Library does not have it's own solution

Shared Library

MVC6Recipes/Chapter06/Recipe05/Recipe05.Dal/

ASP.NET 5 Project

MVC6Recipes/Chapter06/Recipe05/src/Recipe05.Web

[johnciliberti]

Here is another way to make it fail. :-)

1. Start with an empty solution
2. Add Class Library project
3. Create ASP.NET Project and select ASP.NET 5 template
4. Build Solution
5. Add reference to class library in web project

In this case, since you started with an empty solution, you do not get a global.json file at all.

The work around is to remove the reference, manually delete the generated wrap directory in class library project folder and then manually create a global.json file. After that, you can add the reference and it will get you past the issue of not being able to find the package.

Even after this fix, there are other issues such as what lucamorelli mentioned in issue #8 where you get Entityframework 7 beta 4 rather then EntitityFramework 6.x. Seems like the only way to make it work is to manually add

"bin": {
        "assembly": "../../../packages/EntityFramework.6.1.3/lib/net45/EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll"
      }

To the web project's project.json file.

I think maybe you should rethink how the wrap command works for Visual Studio. Maybe you can add an option to the command line interface that would tell wrap to modify a specified project.json file rather then creating the wrap directory as it does today.

[davidfowl]

In #8 he Luca was referencing EF7 and EF6

[AlexeiScherbakov]

I have this situation.
Project C depends on Project B, which depends on Project C
All them needed to be referenced in ASP.NET 5 project.

1. I call 'dnu wrap' on Project C - it references normally [ "Project C Wrapped" ]
2. I call 'dnu wrap' on Project B - it have trouble with reference to Project C. [ "Project B Wrapped" ]
   So I cannot reference entire chain even if I disable 'dnxcore50' compilation

[BjBlazkowicz]

I can't get this to work even how hard I try.

Issue is reproduced by the following steps:

1. Create Empty ASP.NET 5 Application
2. Create new .csproj class library in the same solution
3. Reference the class library from the ASP.NET 5 app and it does not work:
   Dependency ClassLibrary2 >= 1.0.0-* Could not be resolved

Tree:
├───artifacts
│ └───obj
│ └───WebApplication3
│ └───Debug
│ └───ProjectRawReferences
│ ├───DNX 4.5.1
│ └───DNX Core 5.0
├───ClassLibrary2
│ ├───bin
│ │ └───Debug
│ ├───obj
│ │ └───Debug
│ │ └───TempPE
│ └───Properties
├───src
│ └───WebApplication3
│ ├───Properties
│ └───wwwroot
└───wrap
└───ClassLibrary2

[jcmordan]

I resolved this,
The ASP.NET 5 web app project must have in < 4.5.2, not 4.6.

[sayedihashimi]

This issue is pretty old. We have worked on improving the Add Reference support. We still have some issues related to wrap but I think the basic scenarios should work.

I'm going to close this, but if you are still having issues you can either re-open this or open a new issue with steps to reproduce.

[runxc1]

So how is this supposed to work? I am running into some of the same problems here. I have an existing Solution with projects A, B,C,D in it and I created a new Asp.Net 5 Solution with 4 new projects and everything working fine.

I added the 4 existing projects to the Solution and saw that a project.json file was added for each of them in a /wrap folder. I then tried to reference to projects A-> D to one of the Asp.Net projects and am now getting an error.

How do I work around this error?

[nigel-dewar]

I tried this and many other things. Nothing works. Why is it so hard to add a class library and reference it from the asp.net 5 project?