Error: Unable to load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Windows.Design.Host,

Norbert_Saint_George · May 18, 2023, 7:29pm

Hi, Error when opening projects with net core 6 and Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022 (64 bits) libraries - Preview Version 17.7.0 Preview 1.0

I can’t find any ref on this dll in the sources.

Any idea?

Norbert_Saint_George · May 19, 2023, 5:34am

Hi,

After installing Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022 (64 bits) - Current
Version 17.6.0, projects open and compile “normally” but remain “unloaded” under version 17.7.0 preview.

Microsoft had to remove more accessible DLLs in 17.7

mh · May 21, 2023, 1:20pm

Do you reference Microsoft.Windows.Design.Host directly/explicitly?

Does every project fail on 17.7.0 (ickluding non-.NET ones), or only a specific one(s)?

thanx,
marc

Norbert_Saint_George · May 21, 2023, 2:07pm

Do you reference Microsoft.Windows.Design.Host directly/explicitly?
no never

Does every project fail on 17.7.0 (ickluding non-.NET ones), or only a specific one(s)?

net 4.8 projects are running correctly.
only the Net Core libraries generate this error under VS preview 17.7.0 ( 17.6.0 is ok).
Under Water no problem with the same libraries.

mh · May 22, 2023, 5:47pm

Thanx for the follow-up. Initial investigation has shown that this seems to be a deliberate breaking API change on Microsoft’s side, for the next version of VS. That .dll has APIs we need/use for the WPF designer, but it has been removed by MS.

We’ll investigate what to do, and hope we can have a fix before this version leaves preview status. Thanx for making us aware of this change early on!

—marc