I have a Visual Studio 2012 solution containing three projects. A simple dependency graph

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Editorial Team

Asked: June 11, 20262026-06-11T21:17:26+00:00 2026-06-11T21:17:26+00:00

I have a Visual Studio 2012 solution containing three projects. A simple dependency graph of the structure is:

The problem I have is when compiling ConsoleUI, RestSharp is not copied to output but Newtonsoft.Json is causing a runtime error in my application.

I have checked that Copy Local is set to true in the project properties of SubProject.

I have done a full Clean and Build to no avail.

Can anyone think of a solution without manually including the required assembly in ConsoleUI?

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-06-11T21:17:27+00:00

This sounds like a long-existing behavior in MSBuild. Which assemblies actually get copied locally when you build ConsoleUI is calculated based on:

Primary references of your project (in this case SubProject)
Any compiler-detected references from your primary references to their references (in this case SubProject -> Newtonsoft.Json is being detected, but * -> RestSharp isn’t).

The two ways to work around this are:

Add an explicit call from SubProject into RestSharp (since any other DLLs are out of your control) that the compiler can’t ignore. This is probably not ideal since it’s throwaway code.
Make RestSharp into a primary reference for ConsoleUI.

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