CODEWITHSUNDEEP
msbuild
Dave
Dave

Reputation: 1925

msbuild not copying referenced assembly

I have a solution that contains two projects: - projectA has a nuget reference to ServiceStack ormlite - projectB has a reference to projectA

When I build the solution the outdir for projectA contains all the assembly coming from nuget packages (4 assemblies), whereas the projectB only copies 2 of them. Obviously when I start it I get an FileNotFoundException. I have already tried with no success to add private=true flag

I have seen many references to this problem and it gets very confused now about what is going on here (it seems that msbuild does not handle reference the way I think is the only thing I know:().

Any idea what could be done to have a reliable process to build my solution ?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 399

Answers (1)

fsimonazzi
fsimonazzi

Reputation: 3013

The build will only copy to projectB's output folder the assemblies that are actually used by projectA and result in references in projectA's output assembly, regardless of which assemblies projectA references.

You can open projectA's assembly with Reflector or ildasm and see that of those 4 assemblies only 2 are actually used and referenced.

If the assemblies need to be there at runtime for projectB, add a reference to the NuGet package to projectB as well, or make sure they are copied. This post shows a general-purpose solution, but I haven't tried it.

Upvotes: 2

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