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How to share static files across solution in Visual Studio 2022?

I'm developing a solution containg multiple web projects that share static content like javascript files.
I've done some research and it seems that proper way of handling it is to add shared files as solution items and then add them as links to web projects:
Then web projects should implement copying these files to output directory (I set them to Content beforehand):
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">
...
<Target Name="CopyLinkedContentFiles" BeforeTargets="Build">
<Copy SourceFiles="%(Content.Identity)"
DestinationFiles="%(Content.Link)"
OverwriteReadOnlyFiles="true"
ContinueOnError="true"
Condition="'%(Content.Link)' != ''" />
</Target>
</Project>
Unfortunetely it doesn't work. I tried installing the MSBuild.WebApplication.CopyContentLinkedFiles NuGet package, but it didn't help.
I tried setting Copy to output directory property to Always which make them present in the build:
However scripts were still missing after launching the app from VS:
How can I make this work? I'm looking for a simplest solution possible.

Your setup potentially will work for publish scenarios but for development environment it won't - the wwwroot folder from the project root (i.e. WebApp1\wwwroot and WebApp2\wwwroot) is used to serve the static files, so you need to copy the shared file there on build (possibly exclude it from git also for convenience).

c# copying files to bin directory

I'm able to have files put into the bin directory using the properties "copy if newer".
The problem I have is that I require a large number of dll files to be put along side my application. This means that my project becomes littered with a large number of files.
I'd like to put my files into an assets folder in my solution but have the files present in the bin directory on build. I have tried using post build events but I keep getting windows error codes (even when it's successful).
Is there an alternative way to have the external dlls accessible to my application?

If you unload the project file you can edit the .csproj file.
Near the end you'll find:
<!-- To modify your build process, add your task inside one of the targets below and uncomment it.
Other similar extension points exist, see Microsoft.Common.targets.
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
</Target>
-->
Lets modify that.
First define which Items the AfterBuild task is going to copy. Notice that you only have to make sure these files exist on your disk in a folder (you say it is called assets) and are under source control. You don't need to include any of those files in your solution or project.
<ItemGroup>
<!-- Include relative to this project file, so ..\assets would bring you to the solution folder
Take all files in the assets folder and subfolders, except *.txt files
-->
<Asset Include="assets\**" Exclude="*.txt">
</Asset>
<!-- take all *.txt files -->
<TextAsset Include="assets\**\*.txt">
<!-- meta data -->
<SubPath>TextFiles</SubPath>
</TextAsset>
</ItemGroup>
Now you'll have two Item collection, one called Asset and one called TextAsset. Those items can be consumed in build Tasks. We are going to use the Copy task. I've commented the build script to explain what happens.
<!-- this does what the name suggests-->
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<!-- log -->
<Message Importance="high" Text="Start Copying assets"/>
<!-- copy Asset files to one folder (flattens) -->
<Copy SourceFiles="#(Asset)"
DestinationFolder="$(OutputPath)" />
<!-- copy TextAsset files to a subpath, keep folder structure-->
<Copy SourceFiles="#(TextAsset)"
DestinationFiles="#(TextAsset->'$(OutputPath)%(SubPath)\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
<!-- done logging -->
<Message Importance="high" Text="Copied assets"/>
</Target>
Notice that I used the property $(OutputPath) which is one of the well known properties. A similar list exists for item meta data.
The changes will not affect the operation of visual studio. Your changes will be preserved when adding or removing regular project items and/or project settings. As you'll keep this file in source control, also on your buildserver the same targets will be run, doing the same copy.
I prefer to test these build targets from the commandline, specifying only the target I'm interested in, like so:
msbuild Application2.csproj /t:AfterBuild
That gives you a much quicker round-trip time instead of doing a full build.

ensuring c# project dependencies are copied to output directory in Visual Studio and TFS

I am working on a project which has many dependencies which are developed on a separate team from me. We use TFS 2010. Many of my applications depend on libraries and xml files which are under active development, so I want to keep them up to date. I also don't want to create separate copies of the dll's and xml files for each application/project, but rather source them from their respective locations within the same source control repository. This should be possible using a relative path.
I tried putting the following in my .csproj file
<ItemGroup>
<Dependencies Include="..\..\Driver\Driver.dll">
<CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</Dependencies>
</ItemGroup>
this doesn't work, either on my workstation or on the build server, however, the files show up as dependencies in the Solution Explorer, and it allows me to change the copy to output property and shows the full path the to files, which is valid.
Another thing I tried was just running xcopy as a pre-build event, which works on my local machine but does NOT copy the files to the output/TFS drop folder, so it isn't picking it up as a dependency.

Try using the Private Element instead, set to True.
<ItemGroup>
<Dependencies Include="..\..\Driver\Driver.dll">
<Private>True</Private>
</Dependencies>
</ItemGroup>
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629388.aspx

Remove folder from MSBuild

I'm trying to remove a folder (well, actually I thought it was easier to remove the files inside it) from a build using MSBuild scripts.
I thought the way is removing them from the copy task itself, but what I was thinking it was going to see quite straightforward it's not working (I'm sure because I don't have much idea of this stuff, just read documentation yesterday and today). Here is how I'm trying to remove the folder (or the files inside it) ..App_Data/Email Templates with this space (does the space something to do?).
<ItemGroup>
<SourceRootFiles Include="$(BuildFolder)/**/*.*" Exclude="$(BuildFolder)/**/App_Data/Email Templates/*.*">
</SourceRootFiles>
</ItemGroup>
<Target Name="PrepareBuild" DependsOnTargets="CleanUp">
<Message Text="Preparing the build directory : $(LocalBuild)"></Message>
<MakeDir Directories="$(LocalBuild)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(SourceRootFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(LocalBuild)\%(RecursiveDir)">
</Copy>
<Exec Command="FOR /r "$(LocalBuild)" %%f IN (.svn) DO RD /s /q "%%f"" IgnoreExitCode="true" />
</Target>
<Target Name="Build" DependsOnTargets="PrepareBuild">
<MSBuild Projects="$(LocalBuild)\Getting.sln" />
</Target>
Update.
Jenkins is raising this error
:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.targets(1852,5): error : Copying file App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm to obj\Latest\Package\PackageTmp\App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm failed. Could not find a part of the path 'App_Data\Email Templates\BuyerRegistrationComplete.htm'. [C:\Builds\Getting\Latest\Build\Web\UI\UI.csproj]
Dont' really know if it's exluding it or not

On githup is a project named MsBuildTasks that contains all kind of custom-actions that you can easily integrate in your project
https://github.com/loresoft/msbuildtasks
From your update tells a "new" story.
In your project-file you reference files in the App_Data folder which WebDeployment wants to copy to deployment. Removing App_Data results in missing files and thus failure.
Either move those files to another location in your project or remove the references to those files.
My suggestion would be to make a separate folder for the templates, App_Data has a different purpose.

How do I automate repetitive tasks post-build?

I run an ASP.NET website solution with a few other projects in it. I've known that MSBuild projects are capable of this, but is it the best way? Are they easy to create? Is nAnt, CruiseControl.NET or any other solution better?
When I build the site (using Web Deployment Projects), can I automate part of the build so that it does not copy certain folders from the project into the Release folder? For instance, I have folders with local search indexes, images and other content part of the folder, but I never need or upload those when deploying the project.
I'm also looking toward this type of solution to automatically increment build and version numbers.

Here's an example of a Web Deployment Project scripting this sort of task in the .wdproj file:
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
<!-- ============================ Script Compression============================ -->
<MakeDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\compressed" />
<Exec Command="java -jar c:\yuicompressor-2.2.5\build\yuicompressor-2.2.5.jar --charset UTF-8 styles.css -o compressed/styles.css" WorkingDirectory="$(OutputPath)" />
<Exec Command="move /Y .\compressed\* .\" WorkingDirectory="$(OutputPath)" />
<RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\sql" />
<Exec Command="c:\7zip-4.4.2\7za.exe a $(ZipName).zip $(OutputPath)\*" />
</Target>
This would allow you to delete a folder.
(I suspect that if you wanted to not have the folder copy over at all, the solution file would be the place to specify that, though I haven't had to use that.)

MaseBase, you can use Web Deployment Projects to build and package Web Sites. We do that all the time for projects with a web application aspect. After you assign a WDP to a Web Site, you can open up the .wdproj file as plain-text XML file. At the end is a commented section of MSBuild targets that represent the sequence of events that fire during a build process.
<!-- To modify your build process, add your task inside one of the targets below and uncomment it.
Other similar extension points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.
<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
</Target>
<Target Name="BeforeMerge">
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterMerge">
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild">
</Target>
-->
You can uncomment the targets you want (e.g. "AfterBuild") and insert the necessary tasks there to carry out your repeated post-build activities.

You can set the Build Action/Copy to Output Directory property on individual files (select the file and hit F4 to open the properties window) to control what happens to them during build, but not for folders. This could probably be automated with a (pre) build task if you don't want to do it manually.
Alternatively, you can exclude these folders from the project (right click and 'exclude from project'); they'll still be there ("show all files" in solution explorer), but they won't be included when building the project.

CruiseControl.NET solves a different problem (continuous integration) ... however, I've had great success with NAnt for specifically what you're asking. There's a learning curve, but once you get proficient you'll wonder how you ever got along w/o it.

In addition to #Fredrik's tip about setting project items to "Copy to Output Directory", you can also specify a post-build action in the project's properties in the Build tab and include CMD commands like copy.exe and move.exe.

We use FinalBuilder to automate a bunch of post build / pre build tasks. There's also a web interface so you can kick off builds (or push websites) by logging in to the web site and clicking a button.
http://www.finalbuilder.com/

Can't you edit the Web Deployment project's MSBuild file for it to do what you want?