[visual-studio] VS2010 How to include files in project, to copy them to build output directory automatically during build or publish

Task is to form Visual Studio 2010 project so, that during any build or publish some foo.exe utility should be copied to output (bin) directory.

Early I have made PostBuildEvent task in .csproj (MSBuild-file):

<PropertyGroup>
  <PostBuildEvent>
    Copy "$(SolutionDir)Tools\foo.exe" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)foo.exe"
  </PostBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>

But this is not universal. During publishing (Visual Studio 2010) foo.exe appears in bin directory, but is not copied to output publish directory. Maybe I do everything completely wrong and there is standard mechanism to include files in projects to be later, during build or publish, copied to bin?

This question is related to visual-studio msbuild project

The answer is


In Solution Explorer, please select files you want to copied to output directory and assign two properties: - Build action = Content - Copy to Output Directory = Copy Always

This will do the trick.


Just so my fellow neuronically impaired comrades might chance upon it here, I had assumed that, for web projects, if the linked file was an external .config file that the "output directory" would be the same directory that web.config lives in, i.e. your web project's root. In retrospect, it is entirely unsurprising that it copies the linked file into the root/bin folder.

So, if it's an appSettings include file, your web.config's open tag would be

<appSettings file=".\bin\includedAppSettingsFile.config">

Duh.


  1. Add the file to your project.
  2. Go to the Properties of that file.
  3. Set "Build Action" to Embedded Resource.
  4. Set "Copy to Output Directory" to Copy Always.

In my case, setting Copy to Output Directory to Copy Always and Build did not do the trick, while Rebuild did.

Hope this helps someone!


I only have the need to push files during a build, so I just added a Post-build Event Command Line entry like this:

Copy /Y "$(SolutionDir)Third Party\SomeLibrary\*" "$(TargetDir)"

You can set this by right-clicking your Project in the Solution Explorer, then Properties > Build Events


Try adding a reference to the missing dll's from your service/web project directly. Adding the references to a different project didn't work for me.

I only had to do this when publishing my web app because it wasn't copying all the required dll's.


Examples related to visual-studio

VS 2017 Git Local Commit DB.lock error on every commit How to remove an unpushed outgoing commit in Visual Studio? How to download Visual Studio Community Edition 2015 (not 2017) Cannot open include file: 'stdio.h' - Visual Studio Community 2017 - C++ Error How to fix the error "Windows SDK version 8.1" was not found? Visual Studio Code pylint: Unable to import 'protorpc' Open the terminal in visual studio? Is Visual Studio Community a 30 day trial? How can I run NUnit tests in Visual Studio 2017? Visual Studio 2017: Display method references

Examples related to msbuild

How can I install the VS2017 version of msbuild on a build server without installing the IDE? The default XML namespace of the project must be the MSBuild XML namespace The CodeDom provider type "Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.CSharpCodeProvider" could not be located Visual Studio 2013 error MS8020 Build tools v140 cannot be found Getting msbuild.exe without installing Visual Studio Found conflicts between different versions of the same dependent assembly that could not be resolved This project references NuGet package(s) that are missing on this computer NuGet auto package restore does not work with MSBuild The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found error LNK2038: mismatch detected for '_MSC_VER': value '1600' doesn't match value '1700' in CppFile1.obj

Examples related to project

How to create a Java / Maven project that works in Visual Studio Code? IntelliJ does not show 'Class' when we right click and select 'New' error C2220: warning treated as error - no 'object' file generated Android Studio: Default project directory Error: Selection does not contain a main type How to open an existing project in Eclipse? The project was not built since its build path is incomplete Eclipse projects not showing up after placing project files in workspace/projects Method to find string inside of the text file. Then getting the following lines up to a certain limit "Sources directory is already netbeans project" error when opening a project from existing sources