VS2010 How to include files in project to copy them to build output directory automatically during build or publish

Question

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     lt PropertyGroup gt     lt PostBuildEvent gt      Copy    SolutionDir Tools foo exe     ProjectDir   OutDir foo exe     lt  PostBuildEvent gt   lt  PropertyGroup gt    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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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    lt appSettings file    bin includedAppSettingsFile config  gt   Duh

User · Answer

There is and it is not dependent on post build events   Add the file to your project  then in the file properties select under  Copy to Output Directory  either  Copy Always  or  Copy if Newer    See MSDN

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Add the file to your project  Go to the Properties of that file  Set  Build Action  to Embedded Resource  Set  Copy to Output Directory  to Copy Always

User · Answer

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

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

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