Debugging error "The Type 'xx' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced"

Question

The full error is as follows:

The type 'System.Windows.Forms.Control' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.

and it points at the very first statement (an Debug.Assert line) in the very first class in a library project that doesn't need System.Windows.Forms (or so I thought). I know how to solve it: add the mentioned reference. But how do I find out what library is causing this error, or better, what part of the code triggers using the WinForms library?

Normally, you can add libraries that reference others, but you only need to add references to these others when they're actually used.

---

EDIT: Alternative solution

This or similar problems can also be resolved using the Binding Log Viewer Fuslogvw.exe from Microsoft's Framework Tools. It shows all attempts and successes of assemblies your application binds to.

Sentimentalize

Answer 1

I suspect there's no line of your code that's causing this, since you say you aren't making use of the System.Windows.Forms types and the compiler error isn't pointing to a (useful) line of your code.

What I think is happening is that you're referencing a library which has a publicly-visible method or property that either returns a System.Windows.Forms.Control or takes one as a parameter. It doesn't matter whether you actually end up calling that method/property, the fact that it's publically visible means that your own code has to be able to resolve all the types that the library is using. If the library only used System.Windows.Forms internally, you wouldn't be experiencing this.

It also means just looking at the dependencies of the assemblies you're depending on may merely narrow down the list of suspects, since there could be some assemblies that depend on System.Windows.Forms internally (no problem) and the one troublemaking assembly that has a public parameter / return value of a type from the S.W.Forms assembly.

My suggestion is you just set up an empty project without a reference to S.W.Forms, then add each of your dependencies in turn and try to compile after each one.

Journal

This proves correct: There was a referenced lib that had a generic method that was restrained to Control, but wasn't used in any way. I knew about the possible causes, I just hoped for a "straight" way for finding the culprit. I used simple deduction this time (rollbacks until the problem arises) – Sentimentalize

I'm not sure there's an easy way of identifying the culprit, other than your suggestion (rollbacks) or mine (set up a testcase project and add dependencies one at a time until it fails to compile). The manifest of a .NET assembly contains details of all the other assemblies it depends on, but there's nothing that says "if you reference this assembly, you'll also need to reference that one too". Any tool that solved this problem would have to use reflection to check the types of all return values and parameters for every method in the assembly you're looking at - it's quite a specific task. – Journal

Answer 2

I had the same error.

The problem was that I used a reference to a project, which uses System.Windows.Forms inside.

The solution is to add a reference to System.Windows.Forms also in your project.

Botulin

Yes, that was what I wrote in the original question already. The real question was, how to find which of possibly potentially hundreds or thousands of referenced project is the one requiring the reference. – Sentimentalize

Answer 3

Use something like NDepend or Reflector or the Object Browser to check the dependencies of the assemblies you depend on.

I cannot think of any other way given the info above.

Beaumarchais

That's the way I'd currently thought of as well, but it's either too rough (NDepent) or too granular (Reflector). I can also rollback my code changes until the moment the error rose, this will show the line that causes this. I hoped for something else. – Sentimentalize