What builds are needed for MVC4?

Question

In MVC4 templates, many (... many!) Assemblies are added to the project, even for an "empty" template.

Which ones are really necessary, and what does everyone really do - I can’t find the list anywhere? I just want to reference the ones I need.

I created an “empty” project and started deleting them one by one, but it is very tedious (and interrupts) due to related changes to web.config, etc.

Answer 1

Unable to find anything official, but managed to start the barebones project using this answer .

I would like to know what all the DLL files in various templates are for.

Answer 2

If you use ReSharper, you can right-click the Links folder and select Delete Unused Links or the safer option to Optimize Links. The latter option gives you a report on which assemblies are and are not used.

Use caution when using this in a mature solution where dependencies are injected, as you may not have links to direct assembly references at compile time. But they may be required during operation.

Sorry, I did not answer your question directly, but I hope I showed you how to find out for myself.