How to force msbuild and nuget to pack the referenced Lib as dll?

Question

I have 2 Projects:
Project A is .Net Standard 2.0
Project B is .Net Framework 4.6.1

In B I reference to A like this (csproj):

 <ItemGroup>
<ProjectReference Include="A.csproj">
  <Project>{60DEB41B-8670-4199-95C2-FE68EB06B099}</Project>
  <Name>A</Name>
</ProjectReference>

Now when I pack a nuget of B, I can't access A because it doesnt resolve the dependency.

here are the commands, run by gitlab ci, to create the project B:

nuget restore
msbuild B.csproj
nuget pack -version $VERSION
dotnet nuget push **/*.nupkg ...

How to include the lib of A as DLL in B?

Answer 1

Actually, adding a reference at the project level does not automatically add the corresponding reference dll during the packaging process. You need to add an additional dll to the nuget package manually.

I have two solutions:

Solution One

Just as Cem.S said, use -IncludeReferencedProjects to pack your project.

Also, since you pack a net framework nuget project, you only have to use nuget.exe cli to pack the project with the created nuspec file:

Use this command to pack your project B:

nuget pack xxx\B.csproj -IncludeReferencedProjects

Solution two

Or just add such node in B.nuspec file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package >
  <metadata>
    <id>xxx</id>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <title>xxx</title>
    <authors>xxx</authors>
    .....
  </metadata>
  <files>
   <file src="xxx\xxx\A.dll" target="lib\net461" />
  <files>
</package>

Then, run nuget pack xxx\B.csproj to generate the new version.

Before you install the new version, you should first clean nuget caches first.