Project Reference with ReferenceOutputAssembly tag with false value does not copy its SatelliteDlls

according to this link https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/kirillosenkov/2015/04/04/how-to-have-a-project-reference-without-referencing-the-actual-binary/

I referenced the assembly of ProjectA in the projectB with ReferenceOutputAssembly=false like below :

    <ProjectReference Include="..\ProjectA\ProjectA.csproj">
      <Project>{b402782f-de0a-41fa-b364-60612a786fb2}</Project>
      <Name>ProjectA</Name>
      <ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly>
      <OutputItemType>Content</OutputItemType>
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </ProjectReference>

This will indicate a dependency between projects to MSBuild, but won’t pass the output assembly of ProjectA as a reference to the compiler when compiling ProjectB. MSBuild just copies the assembly A dll into the output directory for assembly B ,not the Satellite Dll. I need both ProjectA.dll and ProjectA.resources.dll in the output directory but just projectA.dll is copied , Satellite Dll of Project A is not copied..

Solution

MSBuild just copies the assembly A dll into the output directory for assembly B ,not the Satellite Dll. I need both ProjectA.dll and ProjectA.resources.dll in the output directory but just projectA.dll is copied , Satellite Dll of Project A is not copied..

The issue also appears in my side and I think when you use the function( Methods in the link) above, it will replicate the dependency without referencing project A, but also ignores the DLLs or resources.dlls referenced by project A. This approach focuses on Project dependencies and ignores other third-party DLLs used by the Project.

This behavior is characteristic of that scenario you used.

However, if you still want to use this function to reference Project A, you can try to use build event or copy task to copy ProjectA.resources.dll into the output path of Project B when you build:

1) Right-click on Project B-->Properties-->Build Events-->Post-Build Event Command line and then input this:

xcopy /y "xxxxxxxxxxx\de\ProjectA.resources.dll" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutputPath)de"

xcopy /y path1 path2: path1 means the path of the original file and path2 means the destination address.

Update 1

generally your solution works but it doesnt work for me because I want to publish with clickonce and Postbuildevent is not called during the publish .. I added a before publish tag in csproj of the project B to run the postbuildevent but it doesnt work

First, you do not have to run the custom target after the wrong target Publish,instead, you should use the PublishBuild Target. Then use copy task to copy the file into Puplish folder during you execute the clickonce operation.

After all, you can try my sample which l have tested successfully in the ProjectB.csproj file.

<Target Name="CopyToPublish" AfterTargets="PublishBuild">
    <ItemGroup>
      <ResourceFiles Include="xxxxxxx\ProjectA.resources.dll" />   // the path of the ProjectA.resources.dll
    </ItemGroup>
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(ResourceFiles)" DestinationFiles="@(ResourceFiles->'$(PublishUrl)\de\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
  </Target>

Update 2

After l do some research, I found that when VS put files into Clickonce Manifest, it runs the targets(GenerateApplicationManifest, GenerateDeploymentManifest,GenerateManifests and so on) sequentially.These are the targets that act as the concrete execution of the file into the manifest. So when you use use your BeforePublish target to put the extra file as an item, you should run before the target. So please try this:

<Target Name="BeforePublish" BeforeTargets="GenerateApplicationManifest">
    <ItemGroup>
      <AdditionalPublishFile Include="xxxxxxx\de\ProjectA.resources.dll">
        <Visible>False</Visible>
      </AdditionalPublishFile>
    </ItemGroup>
    <Touch Files="@(IntermediateAssembly)" />
    <CreateItem Include="@(AdditionalPublishFile)" AdditionalMetadata="TargetPath=de\%(FileName)%(Extension);IsDataFile=false">
      <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_DeploymentManifestFiles" />
    </CreateItem>
  </Target>

When you publish the project, the ProjectA.resources.dll will display in the ProjectB.manifest file successfully. But the extra file will not display in the Property UI Publish-->Application Files, l think this is a UI display problem that does not affect the output of this file.

Hope it could help you.