I am new to using Microsoft development tools but have been using Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 and C# for the past few weeks. I ran into a problem yesterday creating a new project the same way I have been doing it successfully from the start: right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer → Add Reference, which used to bring up this dialog:
Old Dialog Box http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8978/oldaddreferencedialogue.jpg
After a couple of weeks of no new projects I went to create one yesterday and got a new Add Reference dialog. And trying to add the same dll I have been adding for weeks now resulted in the error seen here:
New Dialog http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/2074/newaddreferencedialogue.png
So, after a painful day trying to determine the cause, it looks to me like it has something to do with the new dialog choking on the # I had in my reference path. When I removed the # everything works as expected. Considering Microsoft has two .NET languages with # in the name, I am surprised that this issue keeps biting people (I have heard of this problem over the years, but I have never done much with Microsoft tools until recently, so of course I did not recall it.)
Questions from a Visual Studio newbie:
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Is it common knowledge to not use # in paths?
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How/why did I get this new Add Reference dialog when my colleagues, using the same VS version, still have the old dialog that handles # in paths just fine?
The second dialog is the one from the VS2010 productivity power tools pack – I havent used it myself so dont know of any problems with it. Have you recently installed this?