I’m trying to initialise my dependency registration for a WCF service running in an

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Asked: June 15, 20262026-06-15T06:10:04+00:00 2026-06-15T06:10:04+00:00

I’m trying to initialise my dependency registration for a WCF service running in an

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I’m trying to initialise my dependency registration for a WCF service running in an Azure Web Role, but I’m seeing a very unusual behaviour whereby the static constructor of my class is being invoked twice.

This is the Dependencies class I’m using as a registry point for the dependencies of the application.

public static class Dependencies
{
    private static IUnityContainer container;

    static Dependencies()
    {
        Dependencies.container = new UnityContainer();
    }

    public static IUnityContainer Container
    {
        get
        {
            ...
        }

        set
        {
            ...
        }
    }

    public static void ConfigureContainer()
    {
        var container = new UnityContainer();

        // Configure container.

        Dependencies.container = container;
    }
}

In my overload of RoleEntryPoint.OnStart(), I make a call to a static ConfigureContainer method to set up the container with my dependencies registered:

public override bool OnStart()
{
    // Configure container for dependency resolution.
    Dependencies.ConfigureContainer();

    return base.OnStart();
}

My expectation is that the static members of the Dependencies class should be initialised by this code and will be available to the components of the application.

What I’m seeing (using a breakpoint and the VS2012 debugger) is that the static constructor of Dependencies is being called twice: once during the original initialisation of the application and again during first request to the service. Subsequent requests don’t invoke the static constructor (as expected).

I’d love to hear an explanation of why the runtime is behaving this way and what I should be doing instead to produce my static registry of dependencies.