Question

Just like Carl’s question over here I would like to ask you (because I couldn’t find it out on my own 🙁 ) if there is any benefit by removing an assembly reference that is not statically nor dynamically (via reflection for example) used.

Answer 1

Removing unused assembly references wouldn’t change anything apart from cleaning your projects. When you add assembly references the compiler will ignore any assembly which you have not actually made use of in your code. Thus, if you were to set a reference to System.Data.dll and System.Windows.Forms.dll but only authored the following code:

using System;  public class MyClass {   public static void Main()   {     Console.WriteLine('Hi there.');   } } 

the compiler would only reference the mandatory mscorlib.dll