Removing all unused references from a project in Visual Studio projects

Question

I just wondered if it possible within various Visual Studio versions to automatically remove all references from a project that were never been used   In your answer  please specify which version of VS the solution applies to

User · Answer

Some people suggested to use an awesome tool - Reference Assistant for Visual Studio. The problem is that VS2012 is the latest supported Visual Studio. But there is the way to make it work in VS2013 as well ;)

And here is how:

1) Download Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix

2) Change the extension to zip: Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.vsix -> Lardite.RefAssistant.11.0.zip

3) Unzip and open the extension.vsixmanifest file in the text editor

4) Find all occurences of InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0)" and replace them with InstallationTarget Version="[11.0,12.0]" (note the closing bracket)

5) Save the file and zip all files so they are on the root zip level

6) Change the extension of the new zip to vsix

7) Install and enjoy :)

I've tested it with VS2013, thanks source for the tutorial

EDIT Add to support VS 2015 Community Edition

<InstallationTarget Version="[14.0,15.0]" Id="Microsoft.VisualStudio.Community" />

Meaning of the brackets

[ – minimum version inclusive.

] – maximum version inclusive. 

( – minimum version exclusive. 

) – maximum version exclusive.

User · Answer

Using DevExpress  I follow these instructions    In VS  go to DevExpress - Editor - Code Cleanup  Under Rules  check  Remove unused namespace references   Click OK  Right-click on the solution  and choose  Code Cleanup   The cleanup runs for a few minutes  and finishes  Build your application

User · Answer

You can try the free VS2010 extension  Reference Assistant by Lardite group  It works perfectly for me  This tool helps to find unused references and allows you to choose which references should be removed

User · Answer

All you need is stone and bare knuckle then you can do it like a caveman    Remove unused namespaces  for each class  Run Debug build Copy your executable and remaining namespace references to new location Run the executable Missing Reference DLL error will occur Copy required DLL from Debug folder Repeat 4-6 Gu Gu Ga Ga  Throw your stone   You can also rely on your build tools to let you know which reference is still required  It s the era of VS 2017  caveman still survived

User · Answer

In a Visual Basic project there is support to remove  Unused References   Project-- References-- Unused References   In C  there isn  t such a function   The only way to do it in a C  project  without other tools  is to remove possible unused assemblies  compile the project and verify if any errors occur during compilation  If none errors occur you have removed a unused assembly   See my post    If you want to know which project  assembly  depends on other assemblies you can use NDepend

User · Answer

In Visual Studio 2013 this extension works  ResolveUR

User · Answer

You can use Reference Assistant extension from the Visual Studio extension gallery   Used and works for Visual Studio 2010

User · Answer

In VB2008  it works this way   Project gt Add References   Then click on the Recent tab where you can see list of references used recently  Locate the one you do not want and delet it  Then you close without adding anything

User · Answer

If you have Resharper  plugin  installed  you can access a feature that allows you to analyze used references via Solution Explorer    right click  References   Optimize References     http   www jetbrains com resharper webhelp Refactorings  Remove Unused References html  This feature does not correctly handle    Dependency injected assemblies Dynamically loaded assemblies  Assembly LoadFile  Native code assemblies loaded through interop ActiveX controls  COM interop  Other creative ways of loading assemblies

User · Answer

For anybody coming here looking for Visual studio 2012   Download and Install Reference Assistant for Visual Studio 11   Later you can do

User · Answer

For Visual Studio 2013 2015 2017 there is an extension that does exactly what you want  ResolveUR  What this basically does is     reference is removed in the project project is compiled with msbuild check for build errors restore removed references if there were build errors

User · Answer

The following method does not depend on any  add-on s and is not very painful   Step through each of your source files and   Select all  Ctrl-A  Toggle outline expansion  Ctrl-M  M   This will reduce the file to two lines  Click on the namespace s      This will show each of the file s classes as a single line  Scan each class s reference count  looking for unreferenced classes  Click on each of the classes       This will show each of the class functions as a single line  Scan each function s reference count  looking for unreferenced functions    Scanning each file looking for  0 reference  takes only a second   Scanning an entire project takes only a couple of minutes

User · Answer

The Resharper extension will do this for you     This extension supports Visual Studio 2005 through 2017   While the compiler won t include unused assemblies  extraneous using statements and references slows down Visual Studio and Intellisense  since there s more code the tools have to consider

User · Answer

With Visual Studio versions 2017 and 2015  you can do this with the Code Map feature  but this feature is only available in the Enterprise Edition  not the Community or Professional versions   Right-click on the project node in the solution explorer and select  Show on Code Map   This will display your  dll as a single node in a blank graph  Right-click on that node in the Code Map and select  Show Assemblies This References   This will add an additional node called  Externals  which can be expanded to show only the assemblies that are actually referenced

[visual-studio] Removing all unused references from a project in Visual Studio projects

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