Add a third-party library to the Visual Studio Code project

Add a third-party .NET library by editing the

CSPROJ

project file.

Prerequisites

Set Visual Studio Code as the default external code editor. See Set the default code editor.

To add a third-party library to the Visual Studio Code project

Copy the .NET assembly for the library to the

ProjectFiles/NetSolution

project folder.

From the main toolbar, select

Open .NET Solution

The default external code editor opens.

TIP: Rockwell Automation recommends using

Visual Studio®

2022 or

Visual Studio Code

as the default code editor. Some development assistance features may not be available when using a different code editor.

In Visual Studio Code, open the

CSPROJ

project file.

Add the following

element as a child of the

element.

<Reference Include="library">
  <HintPath>path</HintPath>
</Reference>

library: The library that you want to add. For example:
MyLibrary
path: The path to the library from 1. For example:
"MyLibrary.dll"
. Include the path to the library in the project directory to allow the project .NET solution to be compiled on different devices. In this way, the library is correctly referenced whenever acessing the project from other devices.

<ItemGroup>
  <Reference Include="MyLibrary">
    <HintPath>MyLibrary.dll</HintPath>
  </Reference>
  <!-- The rest of the code -->
</ItemGroup>

If the library is located in a different folder than the one set by default

ProjectFiles/NetSolution

, provide a path accordingly, for example:


  <Reference Include="MyLibrary">
    <HintPath>../SampleFolder/MyLibrary.dll</HintPath>
  </Reference>

Save the

CSPROJ

file.

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