After failed attempts to find references to EntityFramework in repositories.config and elsewhere, I stumbled upon a reference in Web.config as I was editing it to help with my diagnosis.
The bindingRedirect referenced 5.0.0.0 which was no longer installed and this appeared to be the source of the exception. Honestly, I did not add this reference to Web.config and, after trying to duplicate the error in a separate project, discovered that it is not added by the NuGet package installer so, I don’t know why it was there but something added it.
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity name="EntityFramework" publicKeyToken="b77a5c561934e089" culture="neutral" />
<bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-5.0.0.0" newVersion="5.0.0.0" />
</dependentAssembly>
I decided to replace this with the equivalent element from a working project. NB the references to 5.0.0.0 are replaced with 4.3.1.0 in the following:
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity name="EntityFramework" publicKeyToken="b77a5c561934e089" culture="neutral" />
<bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.3.1.0" newVersion="4.3.1.0" />
</dependentAssembly>
This worked!
I then decided to remove the dependentAssembly reference for the EntityFramework in its entirety. It still worked!
I would still be interested in answers to these questions:
- What added the dependentAssembly for EntityFramework to my Web.config
- Any consequence(s) of removing these references
I’d be interested to learn.