Referencing portable libraries in windows store project - cannot resolve assembly

Question

we are trying to build windows store application with architecture that can be simplified to the following scheme:

Level 1 portable library

• contains class Class1

Level 2 portable library

• references Level 1 portable library
• contains class Class2 which inherits from Class1

Main app project - Windows store app or windows store class library

• references Level 2 portable library but doesn't in any way use Class2 or Class1

When we try to build the solution, we get following errors: Error 11 Cannot resolve Assembly or Windows Metadata file 'Level1.dll'

It is possible to run the application without any problems, the only issue are the errors during the build time.

I would like to know whether it is some known issue with referencing libs in windows store project (because similar setup works without problems in console application) or whether we are doing something wrong.

Thank you.

Answer 1

This appears to be a bug in the XAML compiler, and doesn't seem to be limited to only portable class libraries. Store class libraries also exhibit the same behavior.

A workaround I found was to add a reference directly from the Store project to the Level 1 portable library. This caused the build to successfully occur.

I've filed a bug internally to track this issue - if you would like to track the progress of this, feel free to file a bug at http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio.