Cant read configuration. RoleEnvironment may be inaccessible due to its protection level - azure

Question

This is my first azure project and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong.
I'm trying to get some configuration inside an MVC 3 webrole and for this I'm using:
RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(KeyName)
When I run the application on the emulator i get his error:
BC30451: 'RoleEnvironment' is not declared. It may be inaccessible due to its protection level.
I tried to add the full namespace like this:
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(KeyName)
And I get this error:
BC30456: 'ServiceRuntime' is not a member of 'WindowsAzure'.
However, I can access the RoleEnvironment inside the "OnStart" event of the WebRole class.
So, is it the expected behavior? If yes, how am I supposed to read configuration through the whole project?
Thanks in advance;

Answer 1

Have you added a reference to the Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime assembly in your MVC project?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.windowsazure.serviceruntime.roleenvironment.aspx

Answer 2

I started a new solution based on seanost suggestion and it worked well, so I figured the problem wasn't VS. After a few try and errors I finally found a solution, I just don't have an explanation for it :-)
Under my MVC project I have a folder called "App_Code".
Since i come from web forms development I'm use to the name so I created this folder to keep some classes. If I try to access "RoleEnviroment" from a class inside this folder the project compiles but won't even open, no matter what I try to access it will throw the same error.
If I rename the folder or move the files to another folder (let's say "Code"), it just works.
As I said before, I just don't know why it happens (and it doesn;t really matter now :-)

Answer 3

FYI, if you're using Visual Studio's Azure templates, references to the following namespaces are included by default, so it's not necessary to set Copy Local to true:
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient
To make sure Visual Studio and the SDK is installed correctly, you should be able to do the following: Create a new MVC3 Azure project, add a using directive for the ServiceRuntime library in your Home controller, then add the following code in the Index action:
ViewBag.configValue = RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString");
return View();
Then, add the following Razor syntax in the View:
<p>#ViewBag.configValue;</p>
And you should get the following result in your browser:
UseDevelopmentStorage=true