Adding reference to another project from visual studio code

If a library (eg, on github) doesn’t distribute itself via a nuget package, I’d have to manually include it as a reference, correct? I see a lot of reference posts for how to add a reference to a project for Visual Studio, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do it on Visual Studio Code.

In this case, I’ve downloaded the library’s zip, and moved the expanded folder into my project, and then tried using <namespace>, which did not work.

EDIT:

I noticed that this downloaded zip contained a .nuspec. Is there something I can do with this file extension to import it in my project?

Answers:

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Method 1

Let’s say you have two projects:

1) Project1.Api

2) Project2.Executable

Command line syntax for dotnet add reference:

    cd Project2.Executable
    dotnet add reference ../Project1.Api/Project1.Api.csproj

If you check the Project2.Executable.csproj file, you will see the following entry:

    <ItemGroup>
         <ProjectReference Include = "..Project1.ApiProject1.Api.csproj" />
    </ItemGroup>

Method 2

Add “vscode-solution-explorer” Extension. It will folder structure as visual studio.
Right click on project –> Add Reference –> Select the reference project from the list.

Method 3

You can open .csproj file of the project you want to add reference to and add project reference like this:

<ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include = "<RELATIVE_PATH_TO_REFERENCE_PROJECT>" />
</ItemGroup>

If the ItemGroup for ProjectReference already exist then you can just add to it.

Example:

<ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include = "../MyLibrary.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>

Method 4

In visual studio, in the solution explorer, expand the project that will reference this other library. You will see “References”, right click and choose “Add”. Then choose browse on the left. Find your dll in your file system. If vs can’t find the library you may need to unzip it. I’ve read where you may need to copy the dll into the bin folders, I recommend trying it without doing that, then copying it in to them if it fails without them.

Btw Googling “visual studio add reference” comes up with A LOT of great results.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0