Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Referencing Assemblies, File Properties window

122Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner’s Guide

Figure 5-5 File Properties window

As you can see in Figure 5-5, the Assembly Information from the project properties is included with the file. This is convenient for you (or an end user) to be able to open the file and read pertinent information, especially version information, to know you’re working with the correct assembly, for debugging, or just to know what is on your system.

Referencing Assemblies

All projects normally reference external assemblies. For example, System.dll is a .NET Framework assembly that contains all of the primitive .NET types and is normally included in every project. Each project type has a specific set of assemblies that appear in the References list. The assemblies that appear in this list are either required because of the type of project you are building or are optional and contain libraries that are commonly used for that type of project. You are free to remove assembly references if you like, but be aware that removing a reference to an assembly required for that project type is likely to result in your code not being able to compile.