Do Project References with a Yield/Warning sign need to be updated, or can they be safely removed?

Question

After a long hiatus away from it, I've returned to a project that targets the CF framework; the project has two references tagged with yellow "yield"/Warning glyphs (namely "ErikEJ.SqlCe.NetCF" and "Newtonsoft.Json.Compact").

The project compiles, so it seems whatever ails these two references is not causing a big problem.

Does this state of affairs (compiles, but displays warning signs) mean I can safely remove those references, or does it mean some action is required on my part to make these references "safe for democracy" again?

The project seems to be confused as to where these are, as the Path property is blank and the Version property is "0.0.0.0"

If they can't be found, and yet all is presumably well, that indicates to me that I can simply remove them. But...they were added for some reason, and I'd like reassurance before taking that semi-drastic step.

Answer 1

Do note that a warning symbol on top of a reference doesn't mean that it's unresolvable. Instead it means that there was some error, possibly inability to resolve, for that reference. For instance if you add a Condition property to the reference VS will show it with the warning symbol but the assembly is still resolvable.

The only way to know if the reference can be removed is to

1. Remove it
2. Rebuild
3. Run all tests

If they all pass then you can say with a high degree of confidence that it is no longer needed