How to – Add/Remove references in Visual Studio Code

Adding references and nuget packages to projects is a common thing in development. I have already written a blog on how to add/reomve nuget packages in vs code.

How to - Add reference to another project

Let’s see how to add and remove project references using command line in Visual Studio Code. The command is :

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dotnet add [PROJECT] reference [-f|--framework] <PROJECT_REFERENCES> [-h|--help]

For example :

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dotnet add reference ..\ReferenceCheckLibrary\ReferenceCheckLibrary.csproj

Now the csproj file of the project would look like this :

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<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include="..\ReferenceCheckLibrary\ReferenceCheckLibrary.csproj" />
    </ItemGroup>
    <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

How to - Remove existing reference from a project

The command is :

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dotnet remove [PROJECT] reference [-f|--framework] <PROJECT_REFERENCES> [-h|--help]

For example :

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dotnet remove reference ..\ReferenceCheckLibrary\ReferenceCheckLibrary.csproj

This would reflect in the csproj file of the project. It would look like :

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<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
    <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

How to - List all the existing reference of a project

The command is :

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dotnet list [<PROJECT>] reference [-h|--help]

For example :

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dotnet list reference

This command would output :

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Project reference(s)
--------------------
..\ReferenceCheckLibrary\ReferenceCheckLibrary.csproj

References : Microsoft Docs