How to make Visual Studio copy a DLL file to the output directory

Question

I have a Visual Studio C   project that relies on an external DLL file  How can I make Visual Studio copy this DLL file automatically into the output directory  debug release  when I build the project

User · Accepted Answer

Use a post-build action in your project  and add the commands to copy the offending DLL   The post-build action are written as a batch script   The output directory can be referenced as   OutDir    The project directory is available as   ProjDir    Try to use relative pathes where applicable  so that you can copy or move your project folder without breaking the post-build action

User · Answer

xcopy  y  d     ProjectDir External   dll     TargetDir     You can also refer to a relative path  the next example will find the DLL in a folder located one level above the project folder  If you have multiple projects that use the DLL in a single solution  this places the source of the DLL in a common area reachable when you set any of them as the Startup Project   xcopy  y  d     ProjectDir    External   dll     TargetDir     The  y option copies without confirmation  The  d option checks to see if a file exists in the target and if it does only copies if the source has a newer timestamp than the target   I found that in at least newer versions of Visual Studio  such as VS2109    ProjDir  is undefined and had to use   ProjectDir  instead    Leaving out a target folder in xcopy should default to the output directory  That is important to understand reason   OutDir  alone is not helpful     OutDir   at least in recent versions of Visual Studio  is defined as a relative path to the output folder  such as bin x86 Debug  Using it alone as the target will create a new set of folders starting from the project output folder   Ex      bin x86 Debug bin x86 Debug   Combining it with the project folder should get you to the proper place  Ex    ProjectDir   OutDir    However   TargetDir  will provide the output directory in one step   Microsoft s list of MSBuild macros for current and previous versions of Visual Studio

User · Answer

The details in the comments section above did not work for me  VS 2013  when trying to copy the output dll from one C   project to the release and debug folder of another C  project within the same solution   I had to add the following post build-action  right click on the project that has a  dll output  then properties -  configuration properties -  build events -  post-build event -  command line  now I added these two lines to copy the output dll into the two folders   xcopy  y   TargetPath    SolutionDir aeiscontroller bin Release xcopy  y   TargetPath    SolutionDir aeiscontroller bin Debug

User · Answer

This answer only applies to C  not C    sorry I misread the original question   I ve got through DLL hell like this before  My final solution was to store the unmanaged DLLs in the managed DLL as binary resources  and extract them to a temporary folder when the program launches and delete them when it gets disposed   This should be part of the  NET or pinvoke infrastructure  since it is so useful     It makes your managed DLL easy to manage  both using Xcopy or as a Project reference in a bigger Visual Studio solution  Once you do this  you don t have to worry about post-build events   UPDATE   I posted code here in another answer https   stackoverflow com a 11038376 364818

User · Answer

OutDir  turned out to be a relative path in VS2013  so I had to combine it with   ProjectDir  to achieve the desired effect   xcopy  y  d     ProjectDir External   dll     ProjectDir   OutDir     BTW  you can easily debug the scripts by adding  echo   at the beginning and observe the expanded text in the build output window

User · Answer

Add builtin COPY in project csproj file      lt Project gt               lt Target Name  AfterBuild  gt         lt Copy SourceFiles    ProjectDir       Lib   dll  DestinationFolder    OutDir Debug bin  SkipUnchangedFiles  false    gt         lt Copy SourceFiles    ProjectDir       Lib   dll  DestinationFolder    OutDir Release bin  SkipUnchangedFiles  false    gt       lt  Target gt     lt  Project gt

[visual-studio] How to make Visual Studio copy a DLL file to the output directory?

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