I have a PackageA that needs a file to be copied to the output of the final application to work as expected.
I include the needed file into my PackageA's project with these lines:
<ItemGroup>
<Content Include="test.txt">
<PackageCopyToOutput>true</PackageCopyToOutput>
</Content>
</ItemGroup>
If I consume the generated package directly, the file test.txt is copied to the output.
Now, if I reference this PackageA from another PackageB, and reference only the PackageB rather than PackageA, the file test.txt is not copied at all to the output while I expected this file to be transitively copied.
I tried digging into the issues of the NuGet/Home repository and found that we should play with the PrivateAssets or something like that (Issue on github and all its siblings). But I never succeeded in making this work.
I made a github repository to show off the issue I'm facing.
I also know that it is possible to copy the file by including .props or a .targets file doing so with a pre-build or post-build action, but I find this solution quite hacky, not elegant, and hard to set up and maintain over time. Moreover, I do have the feeling that NuGet is supposed to support this kind of usage quite easily, so maybe I have missed something somewhere.
On StackOverflow, there are also many posts about transitive copy. However, as far as I dig, it always talks about packages that are directly consumed by a project, or a tree of projects. My issue is a package referenced by another package itself referenced by a project.
From what I understand, you could use the dependency control flow by adding metadata to your project reference https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/package-references-in-project-files#controlling-dependency-assets
In PackageB.csproj
<ProjectReference Include="../PackageA/PackageA.csproj">
<PrivateAssets>analyzers;build</PrivateAssets>
</ProjectReference>
contentFiles should then be in the included assets