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visual-studio-2010msbuildpublish

Copy DLL files to bin directory after one-click publishing in VS2010

I have a web application in VS2010 which has a number of DLLs that need to be copied into the bin directory after doing a publish in VS2010.

I've tried putting the following into my .csproj file (which sits in the root folder of the web applications) but it doesn't seem to work:

<Target Name="AfterBuild">
  <ItemGroup>
    <_CircularDependencies Include="DLLs\Circular\Dependencies\*.dll" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <Copy
    SourceFiles="@(_CircularDependencies)" 
    DestinationFiles="@(_CircularDependencies->'bin\%(Filename)%(Extension)')" 
    SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
</Target>

For bonus points, I have another set of DLLs copied to be copied post-publish, but I want to use one set when doing a debug publish (for Win32) and a different set when doing a release publish (x86).

Thanks!

Solution

  • OK, I've managed to get this working fully. Thanks to the answers provided above, I've been able to add some MS Build commands to the .csproj file to copy the appropriate DLLs from various folders into the bin folder based on the current build configuration. However as these are unmanaged DLLs (i.e. not .NET) I can't create normal references to them and they fail to be copied during the publish. I got around this by dynamically adding the files to the project as 'content'.

    The solution came in three parts. Firstly, create an item group for the files near the top of the .csproj file (I've tried to use generic filenames here to make it clearer), with conditions based on the current build configuration:

    <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <_UnmanagedDLLs Include="Win32DLLs\*.dll" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'">
  <_UnmanagedDLLs Include="x64DLLs\*.dll" />
</ItemGroup>

    Then add another item group to include these DLLs (as content, not references) in the build:

    <ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="@(_UnmanagedDLLs->'bin\%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
</ItemGroup>

    Finally, at the bottom of the .csproj file, I do the copy on the AfterBuild target:

    <Target Name="AfterBuild">
  <Copy SourceFiles="@(_UnmanagedDLLs)" DestinationFiles="@(_UnmanagedDLLs->'bin\%(Filename)%(Extension)')" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
</Target>

    It means I can do a debug publish for my windows 32 staging box and a release publish for my x64 production box while keeping my bin folder out of SVN.