Find all DLL links in a project

Question

In Visual Studio 2010 (or 2012), there is a way to find all the links in the code that indicate any class / method defined in the referenced DLL.

I currently have two processes that I use (depending on the situation):

• The first of these involves simply removing the dll link from the project and then notifying all build errors.
• Another way is to open the link in the Object Browser and then expand the namespaces on it, and for each namespace I do a manual search, but this does not always help to find all the links, and because the legacy code has the same namespaces spanning multiple assemblies contain a lot of noise for filtering.

None of these are truly ideal; is there an easier way to do this? possibly through the VS extension.

Answer 1

You can find this if you install Resharper:

Expand References and select Find code Dependent on Module

Then the results are displayed as follows:

Answer 2

You do not have Resharper, but you have Sublime Text?

In Sublime Text, select "open folder" and select the folder containing the solution. Then select the menu item Find → Find in files ...

In the "Where:" field, enter:

 *.scsproj 

Then in the "Find:" field, find the line

 Include="[full namespaced name of library]" 

eg:

 Include="System.Xml.Linq" 

will find all projects that reference the System.Xml.Linq dll in the solution.

Answer 3

Don't have an extension?

Just write a piece of code ... easier ... I find it very easy to edit code through a project file ..

  private static List<string> FindAllRefrences(ref int ctr, string dir, string projectToSearch) { List<string> refs = new List<string>(); foreach (var projFile in Directory.GetFiles(dir, "*.csproj", SearchOption.AllDirectories)) { if (projFile.IndexOf(projectToSearch, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0) continue; //var t = false; var lines = File.ReadAllLines(projFile); foreach (var line in lines) { if (line.IndexOf(projectToSearch, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) >= 0) { ctr++; refs.Add(projFile); break; } } } return refs; }