I have a MVC .Net application that uses a Crystal Report to return a PDF file. It was working ok, but I wanted to install the most recent version of the runtime on the server to see if it would correct an issue with fonts that I was experiencing.
The server is Windows Server 2008 R2, and I installed the most recent version of CR for VS from the SAP website. This installed two things on the server: SAP Crystal Reports runtime engine for .NET Framework (64-bit) 13.0.21.2533, and SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 13.0.21.2533.
My Visual Studio project has the following Nuget packages installed: CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine, CrystalDecisions.Shared, CrystalDecisions.ReportSource, CrystalDecisions.Web.
Now when I try to access this page and generate the PDF, I get the following server error:
Could not load file or assembly 'CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.CommLayer, Version=13.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
I'm not finding any coherent info online as to why this error is appearing or how to resolve it aside from copying DLLs to the bin folder. I tried adding a couple of Nuget packages relating to CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer. There is not a Copy Local option for the DLL reference, so I tried to manually copy the DLL from the Nuget packages folder for the project and paste them into the bin folder, but that didn't lead anywhere except more errors that I couldn't resolve.
The documentation on this stuff is horrible and confusing, when it seems like it should be pretty straightforward, as I said this was already working before I upgraded the runtime and CR for VS.
Are the Nuget packages maybe not compatible with this newer version? On this SAP blog post, it mentions "As most of CR/RAS .NET Assemblies are now re-versioned from 13.0.2000.0 to 13.0.3500.0, user MUST remove all old CR assemblies from Reference list and add the new version of CR assemblies, then rebuild the application.", but I do not know where to get these assemblies aside from using the Nuget packages.
