Why is System Web Mvc not listed in Add References

Question

Using C   Visual Studio 2010   There is a namespace called System Web Mvc documented on MSDN  The documentation for all the types in that namespace says that they are in System Web Mvc dll   However  when I go to Add Reference      NET    tab  this assembly is missing from the list  Why

User · Answer

I believe you ll find the MVC assembly is referenced in the web config file  not in the project itself   Something like this    lt compilation debug  true  targetFramework  4 0  gt     lt assemblies gt       lt add assembly  System Web Abstractions  Version 4 0 0 0  Culture neutral  PublicKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35   gt       lt add assembly  System Web Routing  Version 4 0 0 0  Culture neutral  PublicKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35   gt       lt add assembly  System Web Mvc  Version 2 0 0 0  Culture neutral  PublicKeyToken 31BF3856AD364E35   gt     lt  assemblies gt   lt  compilation gt    To respond to your comment   The best answer I can give is from here      The add element adds an assembly   reference to use during compilation of   a dynamic resource  ASP NET   automatically links this assembly to   the resource when compiling each code   module

User · Answer

it can be installed separated  and it s not included in framwork  choose tab list  extensions  and it exists there are and more other libs  all is ok not needed to used old libs etc  exists old 20 30 and 4001

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I solved this problem by searching  mvc   The System Web Mvc appeared in search results  despite it is not contained in the list

User · Answer

If you got this problem in Visual Studio 2017  chances are you re working with an MVC 4 project created in a previous version of VS with a reference hint path pointing to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft ASP NET  Visual Studio 2017 does not install this directory anymore   We usually solve this by installing a copy of Visual Studio 2015 alongside our 2017 instance  and that installs the necessary libraries in the above path  Then we update all the references in the affected projects and we re good to go

User · Answer

I had the same issue and wasn t able to locate the System Web MVC reference assembly   Finally found out and it was located inside the following location    Note if your VS was installed in C   Sometimes the MVC dll is not in the default location which everybody talk about  i mean the  Reference Assemblies  folder located in the C  drive    if its not there  it should definitely be in here    Program Files  x86  Microsoft ASP NET ASP NET MVC 2 Assemblies System Web Mvc dll  So add the dll through navigating or the browse tab in the add reference menu

User · Answer

You can also add this from the Nuget Package Manager Console  something like   Install-Package Microsoft AspNet Mvc -Version 4 0 20710 0 -ProjectName XXXXX   Microsoft AspNet Mvc has dependencies on     Microsoft AspNet WebPages    2 0 20710 0  amp  amp   lt  2 1    Microsoft Web Infrastructure    1 0 0 0    Microsoft AspNet Razor    2 0 20710 0  amp  amp   lt  2 1        which seems like no biggie to me   In our case  this is a class library that exists solely to provide support for our Mvc apps   So  we figure it s a benign dependency at worst     I definitely prefer this to pointing to an assembly on the file system or in the GAC  since updating the package in the future will likely be a lot less painful than experiences I ve had with the GAC and file system assembly references in the past

User · Answer

In VS Express 2012 I couldn t find System Web Mvc in the  assemblies  tab  but after a bit of searching I found out that I need to look into  assemblies extensions  tab rather than the default  assemblies framework  tab

User · Answer

Check these step    Check MVC is installed properly  Check the project s property and see what is the project Target Framework  If the target framework is not set to  Net Framework 4  set it    Note  if target framework is set to  Net Framework 4 Client Profile  it will not list MVC reference on references list  You can find different between  Net Framework 4 and  Net Framework 4 Client Profile here       The  NET Framework 4 Client Profile is a subset of the  NET Framework 4 that is optimized for client applications  It provides functionality for most client applications  including Windows Presentation Foundation  WPF   Windows Forms  Windows Communication Foundation  WCF   and ClickOnce features  This enables faster deployment and a smaller install package for applications that target the  NET Framework 4 Client Profile

User · Answer

Best way is to use NuGet package manager    Just update the below MVC package and it should work

User · Answer

The desired assembly has appeared in the list now   I can only speculate what caused it to appear  but I suspect it is the fact that I went File   New   Project   ASP NET Web Application  which I had never done before  It is possible that this caused some sort of late initialisation to happen and the list to be populated with additional assemblies for Web development

User · Answer

I didn t get System Web Mvc in VS 2012 but I got it in VS 2013  Using AddReference Dialog    Or  You can find this in your project path   YourProjectName packages Microsoft AspNet Mvc 5 0 0 lib net45 System Web Mvc dll

User · Answer

OK  adding that XML to the Web config   works  but it doesn   t answer the   question    It should be there  By default the add references list seems to be ordered  but its not the case  Hit the name header and look again

User · Answer

This has changed for Visual Studio 2012  I know the original question says VS2010  but the title will still hit on searches    When you create a VS2012 MVC project  the system web mvc is placed in the packages folder which is peer to the solution   This will be referenced in the web project by default and you can find the exact path there    If you want to reference this in a secondary project  say a supporting  dll with filters or other attributes   then you can reference it from there

User · Answer

I have had the same problem and here is the funny reason  My guess is that you expect System Web Mvc to be located under System Web in the list  But the list is not alphabetical   First sort the list and then look near the System Web

[.net] Why is System.Web.Mvc not listed in Add References?

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