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Assembly element (Visual Studio templates)

Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Specifies information about an assembly, which the template uses to add a reference of that assembly to projects.

<VSTemplate> <TemplateContent> <References> <Reference> <Assembly>

Syntax

<Assembly> AssemblyName </Assembly>

Attributes and elements

The following sections describe attributes, child elements, and parent elements.

Attributes

None.

Child elements

None.

Parent elements

Element Description
Reference Specifies the assembly reference to add when the item is added to a project.

Text value

A text value is required.

This text specifies the assembly to add to a project when the item template is instantiated. This assembly name must be specified in one of the following ways:

  • As a full assembly name. For example:

    <Assembly>
        MyAssembly, Version=1.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, Custom = null.
    </Assembly>
    
  • As simple text reference. For example:

    <Assembly> System </Assembly>
    

Remarks

Assembly is a required child element of Reference.

The Reference, References, and Assembly elements can only be used in .vstemplate files that have a Type attribute value of Item.

Example

The following example illustrates the TemplateContent element of an item template. This XML adds references to the System.dll and System.Data.dll assemblies.

<TemplateContent>
    <References>
        <Reference>
            <Assembly>
                System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
            </Assembly>
        </Reference>
        <Reference>
            <Assembly>
                System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089
            </Assembly>
        </Reference>
    </References>
    ...
</TemplateContent>

See also