Removing all assemblies from <compilation><assemblies> in ASP.NET 4 web.config
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/530683/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-assemblies-node-in-web-config">What is the purpose of the Assemblies node in Web.Config?</a>  </p>
</blockquote>



<p>I removed all the 'add' elements in the compilation/assemblies element.</p>

<p>So initially in my application's root web.config file:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0"&gt;
  &lt;assemblies&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Web.Abstractions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Web.Routing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Web.DynamicData, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Data.Linq, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Web.Entity, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/&gt;
    &lt;add assembly="System.Data.Entity, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/&gt;
  &lt;/assemblies&gt;
&lt;/compilation&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Now it looks like:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0"&gt;
  &lt;assemblies&gt;
  &lt;/assemblies&gt;
&lt;/compilation&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>And my application still works. The project file still has all the references I removed, but this section appears to be unused during compilation (inside visual studio). </p>

<p>What is going on?</p>
