I installed the VS2010 and .NET 4.0, then I compiled an assembly and ran the gacutil using the exe available on
%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools
The output of the executable said the assembly was sucessfully installed on Global Assembly Cache. However, when I go to %WINDIR%\assembly folder I cannot find the assembly I installed using the .NET Framework 4.0 gacutil.
I've seen some posts saying the .NET Framework 4.0 has a separated GAC, but what I haven't found was where it is located.
May someone to help me to check where can I see the Global Assembly Cache of .NET Framework, as it used to work on previous version (%WINDIR%\assembly)?
Yes, there are two distinct GACs as from .NET 4.0
See here: .NET 4.0 has a new GAC, why?
As stated below, the new physical location is %windir%\Microsoft.NET\assembly\ (you can interogate it using the dir command at a command prompt if you're interested).
It's worth noting that applications running up to the 2.0 CLR will not even be able to see assemblies in the new GAC.
Try:
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\assembly\
Due to Common Language Runtime (CLR) changes, the contents of the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) is split between two directories:
%WINDIR%\assembly\
%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\assembly\
If you run the command gacutil -l from the directory of your project's .csproj file, you will get a printout of the contents of the GAC (the contents of both directories).
Related
I was setting up number of projects to build NuGet packages and push onto NuGet server, so it could be later used by Octopus Deploy.
All was fine until I needed to apply the same process to legacy projects. The error was:
error MSB4062: The "OctoPack.Tasks.CreateOctoPackPackage" task could not be loaded from the assembly ...\OctoPack.Tasks.dll. Could not load file or assembly 'file:///...\OctoPack.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded. Confirm that the declaration is correct, and that the assembly and all its dependencies are available.
Now I understand that OctoPack was not built for .Net 2.0, but just wonder if anyone hit/solved that problem.
Are you able to change the build target of the application from 2.0 to something more recent? If so, I would upgrade my app, rather than look for a downgraded version of Octopack.
Alternatively, you can use NuGet.exe to create packages rather than using OctoPack. I actually prefer OctoPack, but NuGet.exe wouldn't care about your .NET version.
I ended up amending the Octopack code to work with .Net 2.0 and MSBuild 2, which is successfully applied to all our .Net 2.0 and 3.5 applications being packaged on the CruiseControl server.
If someone is in a similar situation here is the amended code (forked from the original Octopack)
We're having the seemingly common error
Could not load type 'System.Runtime.CompilerServices.ExtensionAttribute' from assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
in a project that needs to be compiled against .Net 4.0 but is built on a build server running Windows Server 2012 (with .Net 4.5). The project is a web application that gets deployed to a web server running 2003, where installing .Net 4.5 isn't an option. There it runs against "classic" .Net 4.0
From similar questions, we're trying command-line options to MSBuild:
/property:FrameworkPathOverride="C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0"
We also tried various combinations of
/property:ReferencePath="C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0"
/property:NoStdLib=true
/property:NoCompilerStandardLib=true
The reference assemblies (including the .dll files) are in fact installed in that place on the build server. But when we deploy the website and visit the home page, we get that error. (Interestingly, on a page reload, the error disappears, and the site operates normally.) What are the MSBuild parameters necessary to compile against the .Net 4.0 assemblies?
Update
I turned on ludicrous-level logging on MSBuild, and I see that apparently it is building against the .Net 4.0 reference assemblies:
Resolved file path is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0\mscorlib.dll
and I didn't see any mention of assemblies outside that folder or the build server's working directory. So it appears to compile properly, but when deployed on the web server, it throws the exception.
As to the exception going away on a page reload, I wonder if that's related to the markup pre-compile step. We're running aspnet_compile on the build server. Maybe if there's an exception coming from a generated assembly, the web server will re-compile it. And the recompiled assembly is fine, because it was created with true .Net 4.0.
Well the answer turned out to be borderline embarrassing. After we confirmed from detailed MSBuild output that it was in fact building the website project against the right reference assemblies, we realized that there are several in-house NuGet packages in the project that had been built against .Net 4.5. One of them was chock full of extension methods, which is what causes the exception. Rebuilding them against .Net 4.0 fixed the problem.
Which brings up an interesting issue. If a 3rd-party NuGet package is compiled for 4.0 but using 4.5 references, we'd be in the same situation, but not able to fix it. So the lesson for package publishers is to ensure your 4.0 version is compiled against the reference assemblies.
I've installed the full version of .NET Framework 4 (Client Profile + Extended) on a customer machine which is running Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition. The installation was successful without any errors. There were no errors mentioned in the log files either...
BUT the .NET Framework 4 GAC (Global Assembly Cache) is completely missing! In other words, the following folder is missing:-
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly
If I look into the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET folder, I can only see 2 subfolders (as shown below) and nothing else.
authman
Framework
The server still has .NET Framework 3.5 installed and is running properly. This means that the GAC folder below exists and has all .NET library DLLs in it. But of course, there are no .NET 4 DLLs in there.
C:\Windows\assembly
Because of the missing .NET Framework 4 GAC, none of my applications run. They all complain about missing System or System.Xml references. If I copy the missing files from the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 folder to my application directory, they will stop complaining about these files and start complaining about other missing .NET files. Obviously I use a lot of .NET Library references, and I don't want to copy the whole .NET Framework folder into each of my applications.
Does anyone know how to create the missing GAC? Or at least find out what causes the GAC to disappear? I tried multiple times to re-install the .NET Framework 4, but the GAC is always missing...
Edit: I've also tried running gacutil.exe -l to see what is in the GAC, it only list out .NET assemblies of version 1.0 to 3.5. All .NET 4 assemblies are missing.
Note: .NET 4 version of gacutil.exe only comes with Visual Studio (or Windows SDK), so I have to copy the file to the customer site.
I am using the namespace System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization.Charting to create a Chart object on a form. This DLL is not a part of the basic Windows install, so I shall need to include it in my package when I distribute my application.
I am aware of the new version of GacUtil.exe and also that Gacutil.exe is only for development purposes and should not be used to install production assemblies into the global assembly cache. Let's just assume that I have no choice in the matter and have to do it this way due to the use of a proprietary package distribution system. =)
Edit/Update: In the 2.0 runtime, even though some PC's did not have GacUtil.exe present on the intended installation PC, I could drop GacUtil.exe (2.0 version) on the PC and I could then GAC whatever extra assemblies I needed. This appears to be a problem in the 4.0 runtime. Even though I have copied GacUtil.exe (4.0) to the destination PC, I get no feedback when running it against the needed assembly. End Edit/Update
Now, on my PC (the development PC), I can add the DLL to the GAC without any problems:
However, on a clean Windows 7 PC, with the same DLL and the same version of GacUtil.exe I get this:
Why the discrepancy? Does the new GacUtil.exe depend upon something that this PC doesn't have?
Ok, I ended up having two problems, one of them being a moot point in the end.
Problem #1: GacUtil.exe (for the 4.0 CLR) has Dependencies
When i copy over the folder in which GacUtil.exe resides, the problem of adding the assembly vanishes:
This ended up being a moot point, however, because even though the file was in the 4.0 GAC on the client machine, I still had the crash. I realized at that point that the problem was that I am not targeting the 4.0 GAC - I'm targeting the 2.0 GAC. The file I was trying to add to the GAC this whole time was a 4.0 version of the file. This was the piece I wasn't understanding.
Problem #2: There are separate 4.0 and 2.0 versions of "GACable" DLL's, and they are not backwards compatible
I simply went back to my development machine and grabbed the 3.5 version of the DLL in question (System.Windows.Forms.DataVisualization), added it to the 2.0 GAC on the client PC, and crisis averted.
You can run the 4.0 Gacutil from your own folder if you add a "1033" subfolder and include the file, gacutlrc.dll, which can be found in the same subfolder in the standard location.
I am trying to port a small console application from Windows/.NET to Ubuntu/Mono. I have problems to add a reference to the mono version of NLog, which I added to the GAC.
Adding NLog.dll to the assembly was confirmed: Installed NLog.dll into the gac (/usr/lib/mono/gac)
I also find it in the GAC under: /usr/lib/mono/gac/NLog/2.0.0.0__5120e14c03d0593c
First I thought that it was due to my umask 027. But I changed files to 644 and directories to 755. The problem persists.
I am working with: Ubuntu 10.04, Monodevelop 2.2.1, Mono version 2.4.4 (Debian 2.4.4~svn151842-1ubuntu4), Nlog NLog2.mono2-Beta1
Do you have any idea?
The Edit References dialog does not show assemblies registered in the GAC, but assemblies registered by packages using a .pc file. That's explained in the MonoDevelop FAQ.
The GAC is an assembly registry meant to be used at run-time, not at development time. If your application depends on another assembly, that assembly either has to be provided by a package (and advertised through a .pc file) or has to be bundled together with your application. In the later case, you can just use a project or 'file' reference to the assembly.