VS Integration - adding items to project output groups

VS Integration - adding items to project output groups

• LonelyPixel

  Understood. Thanks for reply.
  
  

• mruniqueid

  "Third-party library files has been placed into lib folder of the class library VS project. Because "Copy to output directory" cannot be used on these files (finally they has to be in bin directory, not in bin\lib directory)"
  
  

  What do you mean If you set the copy local = true for this each of the assemblies you are referencing in the class library project, they will be copied to the same place the myclasslib.dll is put in . You would not have to alter anything. Am I missing something
  

  
  "I've created new ItemGroup called LibFile, put the library files into this ItemGroup and to copy these files to output directory I modified AfterBuild target like this:"
  
  

  You changed the AfterBuild project of the mywebproject.csproj file. correct And you have selected the files into the @(LibFiles) item somewhere right
  

  
  If you are doing all the above things, then may be seeing the msbuild ouput log might help. Does the AfterBuild target get excuted at all
  
  
  

• arkiboys

  I'm having this problem with a DLL that is not part of a Web app, and it does not help if I add a reference to the secondary dependency.
  
  

• Xero_2007

  OK. I understand what you are saying.
  
  Unfortunately, supposedly, MSBuild cannot resolve nested dependencies like that, i.e., if you want nativepart.dll in the output directory of your web proj, you must explictly list native.dll as a dependency of the web-proj. Here's the thread discussing this issue
  
  Alternatively, you can do this: create an AfterBuild target in webproj.csproj that call the AfterBuild of the classlib.csproj. It would look something like this -
  
  webproj.csproj
  <Target Name="AfterBuild">
  <MSBuild Project="path-to\classlib.csproj" Targets="AfterBuild"
  Propeties="OutputPath=$(MSProjectDirectory)$(OutputPath)"/>
  </Target>
  
  Essentially, you would be running the Afterbuild target of classlib with the OutputPath pointed to the output path of the webproj.
  
  Hope that helps.
  
  
  

• Thomas S. Andersen

  Reference assemblies are no problem - they are copied correctly. I am speaking about the files which accompany the referenced assembly (this is what I refer to by "third-party library files"). I've been speaking about "Copy to output directory" property item of project files not "Copy Local" property item of referenced assemblies.
  
  Let's say I have referenced assembly assembly.dll, which needs another two files in the same directory where this assembly is located: nativepart.dll and data.bin for example.
  
  In the class library project I have folder "lib" and these two files are inside that folder. Because I want them to be automatically copied to the output directory upon build, but not to the "$(OutDir)\lib" but directly to $OutDir (alias output directory), I've added appropriate Copy task to the AfterBuild target.
  
  As I said, there is no problem in this - the task works correctly, i.e. the files get copied to the output directory upon build exactly as I want. The problem is different - when I build the web project which references the class library project, those two files do not get copied to the web project directory (the referenced assembly does, of course).
  
  So my question is simple: How do I add custom items to the project output in VS msbuild projects, so that they are recognized as project outputs and are treated as such
  
  I guess there is probably some item group which these files has to be added to, and some target that needs to be overriden, but I couldn't find any information on this anywhere.
  
  Hope I'm more clear now, thanks for help.
  
  Martin
  
  
• VS Integration - adding items to project output groups