Showing posts with label nuget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuget. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2016

Could not load file or assembly or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference.

PROBLEM: Received the below error at runtime:

{"Could not load file or assembly 'Newtonsoft.Json, Version=4.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)":"Newtonsoft.Json, Version=4.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed"}

SOLUTION: Lots of potential answers here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22507189/could-not-load-file-or-assembly-newtonsoft-json-version-4-5-0-0-culture-neutr

But for me the problem was I had a solution with multiple projects, each with different versions of the nuget package. Obviously only one version can be deployed and if it an old version that gets deployed a binding redirect isn't going to help - so in my case I had to upgrade each project to use the same version of the nuget package - note there is a new feature (which I didn't use) that can help manage one nuget package across multiple projects in a solution (https://artczernecki.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/consolidating-package-versions-with-visual-studio-2015-nuget-package-manager/ and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34022454/nuget-consolidate-vs-update).

Note, this problem reared its head again briefly after I pulled a different branch via github... I think in that case it was an issue with Visual Studio cache files (*ResolveAssemblyReference.cache) found in the obj folder of the projects... closing the solution and re-starting Visual Studio was enough to refresh these and fix the issue.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: Nuget package versions are not necessarily the same as the dll AssemblyVersion (the important version - this is what the compiler cares about and is the version number that is important for binding redirects etc - can view in Visual Studio under properties where it is referenced or can use ILSpy or similar) or AssemblyFileVersion (what you see when you right click and view a DLLs properties in explorer - compiler never refers to this).  As an example... Newtonsoft.json nuget package 5.0.2 has a AssemblyVersion 4.5.0.0 and AssemblyFileVersion 5.0.2.16008 ... some more reading is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/64602/what-are-differences-between-assemblyversion-assemblyfileversion-and-assemblyin and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11965924/nuspec-version-attribute-vs-assembly-version