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c#visual-studiomsbuildcsproj

Adding reference to another executable with ReferenceOutputAssembly=false doesn't copy dependencies

I have a solution with several executables in it (say, MainApp.exe and Tool.exe). The main goal is to ensure that the tool (Tool.exe) with its dependencies is copied to the main executable directory during build.

I used the advice from here, and it seemed to work with the older Visual Studio version (at least with some version prior to 16.8).

My project structure (simplified) looks like this:

Solution.sln
 ├ MainApp.csproj
 ├ Tool.csproj
 |  └ App.config
 └ ToolLib.csproj

Tool project contains App.config file, and references ToolLib project.

My MainApp.csproj looks like this:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp3.1</TargetFramework>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include="../Tool/Tool.csproj">
      <ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly>
      <OutputItemType>Content</OutputItemType>
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
      <Targets>Build;DebugSymbolsProjectOutputGroup</Targets>
    </ProjectReference>
  </ItemGroup>
  
</Project>

After upgrading to 16.8 after the compilation the file Tool.exe was indeed copied to the output directory, but neither its dependency ToolLib.dll nor Tool.config was copied to the output directory any more.

Is this a bug or intended behaviour? What is the proper way to ensure that the whole Tool with all the needed dependencies is copied to the MainApp's output dir?

Added test project reproducing the problem here: https://github.com/vladd/ReferenceOutputAssembly

Solution

  • What you gave is too old and it is not suitable for VS2019. And all your projects target to net core 3.1. I have tested your project both in VS2019 16.8 , VS2019 16.7, even 16.6 which all act the same behavior as you described. Only contain the Tool.dll and Tool.exe.

    enter image description here

    So I wonder why you said before that the result of the build of ToolLib will be printed in the main project.

    Actually, <ReferenceOutputAssembly>false</ReferenceOutputAssembly> will prevent the most main output files of the referenced project and its dependency project being copied into the main project.

    Suggestion

    You have to set it as true:

    <ReferenceOutputAssembly>true</ReferenceOutputAssembly>

    If you want to not copy ToolLib.pdb and Tool.pdb files into the main project, you could add these node on MainApp.csproj file:

      <PropertyGroup>  
       <AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>*.pdb;.dll.config</AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>        
  </PropertyGroup>

    If you also want to copy pdb files, you should add .pdb under AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions.

    <AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>.pdb;.dll.config</AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>

    Update 1

    I tried your suggestion but with it the files Tools.deps,json and Tool.runtimeconfig.json are not copied, so running the tool fails.

    Add this on MainApp.csproj file:

    <PropertyGroup>
    <AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>.pdb;.dll.config;.runtimeconfig.dev.json;.runtimeconfig.json</AllowedReferenceRelatedFileExtensions>
</PropertyGroup>