[visual-studio-2008] Visual Studio: Relative Assembly References Paths

When adding a reference to an assembly located within the solution directory, is there any way to add it relatively, so that when checked in and out of a repository it is referenced in projects correctly?

I might be off here, but it seems that the answer is quite obvious: Look at reference paths in the project properties. In our setup I added our common repository folder, to the ref path GUI window, like so

That way I can copy my dlls (ready for publish) to this folder and every developer now gets the updated DLL every time it builds from this folder.

If the dll is found in the Solution, the builder should prioritize the local version over the published team version.

In VS 2017 it is automatic. So just Add Reference as usually.

Note that in Reference Properties absolute path is shown, but in .vbproj/.csproj relative is used.

<Reference Include="NETnetworkmanager">
      <HintPath>..\..\libs\NETnetworkmanager.dll</HintPath>
      <EmbedInteropTypes>True</EmbedInteropTypes>
</Reference>

Yes, just create a directory in your solution like lib/, and then add your dll to that directory in the filesystem and add it in the project (Add->Existing Item->etc). Then add the reference based on your project.

I have done this several times under svn and under cvs.

As mentioned before, you can manually edit your project's .csproj file in order to apply it manually.

I also noticed that Visual Studio 2013 attempts to apply a relative path to the reference hintpath, probably because of an attempt to make the project file more portable.

Probably, the easiest way to achieve this is to simply add the reference to the assembly and then (manually) patch the textual representation of the reference in the corresponding Visual Studio project file (extension .csproj) such that it becomes relative.

I've done this plenty of times in VS 2005 without any problems.