We’ve recently adopted the excellent S#arp Architecture for our projects. I highly recommend taking a look at the project site.

On Friday I created a simple WCF service using S#arp’s Northwind sample site for  reference.

Using WcfTestClient I located my service and attempted to test one of the methods, only to get the following error.

Could not load file or assembly ‘Castle.Windsor, Version=1.0.3.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=407dd0808d44fbdc’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

I looked for the usual suspects (rogue entries in the GAC, searching the c: drive for instances of Castle.Windsor) but couldn’t find the problem.

Eventually I discovered this code in the sample site’s web.config.

  1. <runtime>
  2.   <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
  3.     <dependentAssembly>
  4.       <assemblyIdentity name="Castle.Windsor" publicKeyToken="407dd0808d44fbdc" culture="neutral"/>
  5.       <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-65535.65535.65535.65535" newVersion="2.0.0.0"/>
  6.     dependentAssembly>
  7.   assemblyBinding>
  8. runtime>

Copying this to the web.config for my WCF service solved the problem.

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