.NETCore just litters your disk a lot worse, too many versions, too many assemblies, too many standards and no GAC. Hopefully they'll get their act together sometime soon. – Hans Passant Aug 17 '17 at 10:37
No, it just keeps getting worse. : \
\ref\ is lower than the assembly version in \lib\?Details:
We have a class library compiling against .NET Standard 2.0... it references Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json.
MimExtension
\--Dependendencies
\--Packages
\--Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json (5.0.0)
\--System.Text.Json (5.0.0)
\--System.Buffers (4.5.1)
System.Buffers resolves to \.nuget\packages\system.buffers\4.5.1\ref\netstandard2.0\System.Buffers.dll. The file version in that directory is 4.6.28619.1, date 2020/02/19. .NET Reflector shows the assembly version as 4.0.2.0.
The \lib\ version of that DLL is \.nuget\packages\system.buffers\4.5.1\lib\netstandard2.0\System.Buffers.dll... same file version and date, but the assembly version is 4.0.3.0.
Compiling the DLL gives me a .dll.config file with binding redirects that I could copy into the consuming application's app.config - but System.Buffers.dll and System.Text.Json.dll aren't there. Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json.dll also isn't there - though another nuget package, Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Abstractions.dll, is.
I'm assuming this means the compiler thinks no redirect is necessary for the DLLs that aren't in there (see question #3). It makes sense that only DLLs with conflicts across references get added to the binding redirects (if that's what's happening), but conflict or not, our app won't bind to the \lib\ version of the System.Buffers.dll the compiler uses and RTE's (question #1).
To resolve this I can add binding redirects manually. But how do I look at all the nuget references in my project and determine (recursively) what version was chosen for each dll? Short of dumping verbose build output to a text file with some fancy regex and an hour of copy and paste, that is (question #2).
Note: I can add <CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>true</CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies> to the .csproj file and get all referenced dlls dumped to the output directory - including .NET dlls like System.Threading.dll and System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe.dll- but that still doesn't get me a full list of what versions each one are... especially since I need assembly versions, which I can't even display in explorer.
Regarding that... some of the binding redirects generated automatically are for .NET assemblies like System.Threading... does VS really expect me to deploy the version of System.Threading I compiled against? For that dll, I have newVersion="4.0.11.0"... our server has assembly version 4.0.0.0, file version 4.8.3761.0. VS expects me to deploy assembly version 4.0.11.0, file version 1.0.24212.01 (wtff?!?). The 4.0.11.0 version pulled down by nuget is dated 2019/12/26... the 4.0.0.0 server version is dated 2021/01/21.
I'm guessing that's a Core vs. Framework versioning wtf - but binding redirects don't care. The app that will load our library is .NET Framework 4.8... am I supposed to deploy the System.Threading 4.0.11.0 dll with my app, or manually change the binding redirect and let it load the server's version? It's absolutely ludicrous that a core DLL has a higher assembly version than its newer .NET Framework counterpart (question #addingnewonesasigo).
So when we're referencing nuget packages, how do we know what needs deployed and what doesn't (or worse, shouldn't be)? (question #4) I feel like the build process should copy dlls that aren't part of the framework/won't be in the GAC to the output directory - but there's nothing TIAO to indicate that in the nuget package specs.
Regarding #5... shouldn't the dlls in a nuget package have the same version in the \ref\ and \lib\ folders? The breakdown in Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json is in System.Text.Json... S.T.J's .nuspec lists a .NET Standard 2.0 dependency to <dependency id="System.Buffers" version="4.5.1" />. So why would the System.Buffers.dll nuget cache have different versions in \ref\ and \lib\? Shouldn't they both be either 4.0.2.0 or 4.0.3.0?
There are a lot of questions out there on this - even some specifically to System.Buffers. But nobody has resolved this satisfactorily (that I can find) for a class library. I'm going to try adding a scratch website to the solution and reference the library - just to see whether .NET gets the necessary dlls/redirects in place for its only love: Web
Update
I manually added a binding redirect to 4.0.3.0 for System.Buffers... and immediately got the next mole to whack: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Numerics.Vectors, Version=4.1.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies
And so it will go, until we find a way to list everything that VS probed. And without 100% regression coverage, there's no guarantee we won't miss something when we deploy.
Compiling the library for specific platforms pulls the dependent DLLs into the bin folder. This makes sense in retrospect - compiling for .NET Standard is only meaningful when the target platform isn't known and won't be chosen by the developer of the library. That scenario requires a centralized package manager.
Targeting for .NET 4.8 (highest version currently supported by MIM) gave us the DLLs in the bin directory and set binding redirects in the config file.
That said, the System.Buffers.DLL version issue only went away because the .NET 4.8 dependencies were defined correctly. The Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json .nuspec indicates a different assembly version than the dll that gets downloaded when compiling for .NET Standard 2.0. I don't know if that's an issue with the references when the .NET developers compiled the nuget package or an unavoidable artifact of nuget packaging itself.