c# - Visual Studio 2008 - Moving files at build to bin/

Question

EDIT: This is a VS2008 app written in C#.

So I have a folder in my solution called

_lib/ 

It's where I keep my DLLs so that when I reference them, they get built into the bin/ folder.

Now I have a new item in my solution. It's a DLL but shouldn't be reference (it's required for a 3rd party app). So on build I want this to be copied from _lib/ to bin/ but NOT referenced in the project.

I've included the _lib/ folder in my app, and for the properties of that DLL I selected always copy. This ALMOST worked, it copies the file with the folder, so my structure looks like:

/bin/_lib/thedll.dll

Instead of

/bin/thedll.dll

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try following these steps in Visual Studio:

• Expand the project tree concerned

• Double click the Properties element

• In the opened window click the Build Events tab

• In the Post-build event command line text area place this:

  xcopy "$(ProjectDir)_libfile.ext" "$(ProjectDir)bin$(ConfigurationName)"
  

• Open the expected output folder alongside Visual Studio

• Hit CTRL+Shift+B to make sure everything is saved and build

• Feel the sense of achievement well up inside you as your file appears

• :)

Oh, and you can now set Copy to output directory to Do not copy.