MVC4 minimum references

Question

Since a new MVC 4 Internet project has no less that 47 references and 29 nuget packages. I'm wondering what the least number of references I can get away with. I'd like to choose my Javascript and ORM solutions. I basically just want the barebones MVC Framework. What can I get rid of ? And for bonus points what is the minimum I have to add to get WebApi working ?

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 07 '13 at 20:47

Just for the sake of completeness, here are the minimum references I found to be needed for a working ASP MVC application deployed to IIS (in my case version 7.5). That is to say, if you have these references only, your MVC application will run, and if you don't have all of them, it won't run. Also, keep in mind I'm speaking from a deployment perspective, not a local development web server perspective. Running locally without all these references may work but end up failing when deployed to IIS.

Minimum References

REFERENCE                        COPY LOCAL*
---------                        -----------
Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure     true
System                           false
System.Web                       false
System.Web.Http                  false
System.Web.Mvc                   true
System.Web.WebPages              true
System.Web.WebPages.Deployment   true
System.Web.WebPages.Razor        true

*Copy Local is set to false for these references when they're added to your solution. Set the Copy Local property for the references above accordingly to make sure the DLLs are put into the bin directory when building the project. That way, they will be picked up for deployment.

Yep better than my answer. Thanks. – Mark Broadhurst Apr 03 '14 at 13:08 — Mark Broadhurst, Apr 03 '14 at 13:08

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 12 '13 at 14:05

So its been a while, On update 2 there seems to be a empty template which still has a load of unused references, Once you have created the solution you can safely remove the following references:

Microsoft.CSharp
Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure
Microsoft.Web.Mvc.FixedDisplayModes
Newtonsoft.Json
System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations
System.Data
System.Data.DataSetExtensions
System.Drawing
System.EnterpriseServices
System.Net.Http.Formatting
System.Net.Http.WebRequest
System.Web.ApplicationServices
System.Web.DynamicData
System.Web.Entity
System.Web.Extensions
System.Web.Helpers
System.Web.Razor
System.Web.Services
System.Web.WebPages.Deployment
System.Xml
System.Xml.Linq

and from a Nuget point of view you can remove all of the packages except (and their dependencies) :

Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi
Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 24 '12 at 21:49

1

Then don't choose the internet template. Instead, choose the empty or basic templates. That's what they are there for.

The Internet template requires every reference it has. If you want to remove some of those references, you have to remove code from the template.

All of the templates, however, seem to include some packages you may not need, like json.net or WebApi, but those can be removed if you don't need them.

answered Sep 24 '12 at 21:49

Erik Funkenbusch

92,674
28
195
291

1

I'm looking for more of a diagnostic answer rather than use a different template with suffers from the same problem, but less so. – Mark Broadhurst Sep 25 '12 at 08:29
@SaintGerbil - Then the answer is that the Internet Template requires all its references. If you want to remove references, then you will have to also remove code, such as the AccountController (which is where the majority of the references are needed). – Erik Funkenbusch Sep 25 '12 at 16:03

MVC4 minimum references

3 Answers3

Linked