title: Visual Studio 2010 - how to force project reference to use exact path NOT GAC or Program Files?
body: <p>We're forever having this problem, we have a number of solutions and an adjacent /Components/ folder. All the DLLs we want to reference are in this folder. Some of them we've built from source to use a specific version number that only existins in the Components binary but when a user on a different machine gets-latest of everything from TFS and so has the exact on disk structure Visual Studio STILL changes the references to ones that are installed in Program Files, the GAC or elsewhere. </p>
  
  <p>Have tried manually editing the proj file to include HintPath, e.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;Reference Include="Foo, Version=5.5.5.5, Culture=neutral, processorArchitecture=MSIL"&gt;
      &lt;SpecificVersion&gt;False&lt;/SpecificVersion&gt;
      &lt;HintPath&gt;..\Components\Foo.dll&lt;/HintPath&gt;
  &lt;/Reference&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>to no avail. How do we FORCE visual studio to respect this path?</p>