Why are manually copied assemblies not listed in the Add Reference dialog?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Assembly installed into the GAC not showing up in Visual Studio

I have copied log4net assembly to GAC using gacutil command. From explorer I am able to see it that it is copied but when I tried to add its reference to a project I am not able to see it in add reference dialog box.

There is another way to refer it from hard coded path but that could create problem to another developer if that path is not exist on his machine.

How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

Add a folder in your project called references for example, and add the dll to this folder and add reference to the dll from this folder.

Answer 2

Assemblies added to the GAC are not normally listed in the Add Reference dialog. You will have to add
a key to the Registry that points to the location of the assembly. For example:

[HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\MyAssemblies]@="C:\\MyAssemblies"

where MyAssemblies is the name of the folder in which the assembly resides.

See this knowledge base article for more details.

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Do also note that you are generally discouraged from installing assemblies in the GAC. To directly reference an assembly from a project in Visual Studio, you should add the assembly to your project folder and add a reference to this local copy of the DLL instead.

Answer 3

From MSDN

The Add Reference dialog box only lists assemblies in the Public Assemblies folder (Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Common7\IDE\Public Assemblies). You can copy your own assemblies to the Public Assemblies folder, or browse to them directly. Note that you cannot add references from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), as it is strictly part of the run-time environment.