grpc: Transitive dependencies are broken in Grpc C# (new-style csproj projects targeting net45+)

Something about the packaging of gRPC - in particular the native component - looks like it’s changed in 1.3.0, which causes the native library to not be found.

Sample csproj:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net452</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>  
  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Grpc.Auth" Version="1.3.0" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

And program:

public class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Just force the native methods to get loaded
        var server = new Grpc.Core.Server();
    }
}

(It doesn’t get much more minimal than that 😃

Run dotnet restore then dotnet run, and you’ll get an exception with a failure to find the native DLL. The exception isn’t important - but the fact that the native DLL isn’t under bin\Debug\net452 is.

Now, this can be fixed by either of:

• Adding a direct package dependency to Grpc.Core version 1.3.0
• Changing Grpc.Auth to version 1.2.0.

Presumably there’s some change in the packaging (I suspect of Grpc.Core) between 1.2.0 and 1.3.0 that makes this indirect dependency break.

I’d urge this to be treated as a high-priority bug.