How to find all references in a solution (thus of

Question

We have a big solution with a lot of projects in it. Some projects reference the same DLL's and I need to replace one DLL. Is there a way to see which references are in the entire solution so I don't have to go over each project one by one?

I want to see the solution-wide references, not per-project. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Just to expand a little further on Juozas answer, you can use most modern Text editors to find/replace. For example in Notepad++ use Find-in-Files (Ctrl-Shift-F)

Notice I left the end quote off the search as sometimes the Reference will include additional info, eg

Reference Include="System.Web.Mvc, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=

Leaving off the end double quote may then give you false positive (as in my example it includes refs to System.Data and System.Data.DataSetExtensions

Answer 2

You can try textual replace in .XXproj files to change the reference.

Answer 3

Visual Studio by itself doens´t provide any functionality to display or visualize project (assembly) references and dependencies.

For this i would recommened you to use NDepend. It provides a Trial mode and it can analyze your assemblies and display the assembly dependencies.