Requiring library consumers reference additional assembly when using certain types
- by Thomas G. Mayfield
I have library code that uses ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib under the hood to make it easy to use ZIP files as data sources when running integration tests.
As it stands, if I reference my library from another project, the other project will compile just fine, but when it accesses the code that uses SharpZipLib, I get an exception for it not finding the zip library:
failed: System.IO.FileNotFoundException : Could not load file or assembly 'ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib, Version=0.85.5.452, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1b03e6acf1164f73' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
If the types in my library derived from a class in SharpZipLib, it'd generate a compile error CS0012. What other ways are there for triggering a CS0012, so that using code that requires SharpZipLib (but doesn't clearly indicate it) would cause consumer code to fail compilation?
I've had similar problems in the past when I've used libraries like DeftTech.DuckTyping under the hood. I'd add my library code to a new project, start working, compile, run, and then suddenly hit an edge case that I'd used duck typing to get around and get a runtime error.
What I'd most like is to have the same behavior as if I'd derived from a type in the 3rd-party library, so that a reference to my derived type generates a CS0012:
The type 'type' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'assembly'.
