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?
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 "$(ProjectDir)_lib\file.ext" "$(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.
Related
I have a c# service that when built creates a .msi file in the debug folder. At the minute I have to manually copy the .msi out of the debug folder and place it into an install folder in another project in the same source so that tfs will identify the change and allow a check-in.
Is there anyway to set up the project so that the installer gets placed into a different directory when built for check-in?
How about adding a post build event to your project.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ke5z92ks%28v=vs.110%29.aspx
You could either call a batch file, which has the commands you need, or add the commands to the post build event command line text box.
Copy file(s) from one project to another using post build event...VS2010
if everyone is working with the same workspace mappings, ie, the folder you want to output to is in the same relative path for all developers you can just change the build output location.
obviously you need to do this for each configuration or set the same for all configurations.
I have some library files needed for my application to work.
My application has a setup and deployment included.
I already know that in order for a library file to be added to the output directory of the application when installing, I just have to reference those libraries inside the .NET IDE before building... the only problem is that these libraries can't be referenced... So I need to be able to copy these libraries to the installation directory of my application... At the moment, I am copying these libraries manually...
Addendum
I also did try to add these library files as an Existing Item to my project and marked each library files' Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer on their properties but still not getting the solution I want.
Update 1
Thanks for you help guys it helped me solve my problem, I managed to make the solutions you posted work except for one... #Matthew Watson's post.. I even managed to find a solution too so I wanted to share it with you also.
Heres what I did:
I opened the setup and deployment project in my application.
Under the Application Folder Tree, on it's right side, I right clicked..
then clicked Add..
then clicked File
and then browsed for the files I wanted to add to the installation directory
and click open.
But out of curiosity...I am still trying to make what #Matthew Watson posted work...
Update 2
I forgot to update this post yesterday, I already manage to make Matthew Watson's solution worked yesterday. Thank you again for all your help guys.
You can add files to your project and select their properties: "Build Action" as "Content" and "Copy to output directory" as "Copy Always" or Copy if Newer (the latter is preferable because otherwise the project rebuilds fully every time you build it).
Then those files will be copied to your output folder.
This is better than using a post build step because Visual Studio will know that the files are part of the project. (That affects things like ClickOnce applications which need to know what files to add to the clickonce data.)
You will also be more easily able to see which files are in the project because they will be listed with the source code files rather than hidden in a post-build step. And also Source Control can be used with them more easily.
Once you have added "Content" files to your project, you will be able to add them to a Visual Studio 2010 Setup and Deployment project as follows:
Go into your Setup project and add to your "Application Folder" output the Project Output called "Content Files". If you right-click the Content Files after adding them you can select "outputs" and see what it's going to copy.
Note that Setup and Deployment projects are NOT supported in Visual Studio 2012.
You can use Visual Studio Post Build Event - Copy to Relative Directory Location. Which are basically scripts that are executed on build of specified project.
So you can use it to copy binaries you need, before actually running your application.
I am trying to pull in a dependency, xulrunner to be exact. It is basically a folder of binaries and an executable called xulrunner.exe. The code initializes xulrunner for use by passing in the location of xulruner.exe to an api of another dll that my program uses.
How do I get visual studios to copy over the entire directory of xulrunner to the release folder on build so I can package xulrunner with my program and use a relative address when specifying the file path to xulrunner.exe.
You can add Post-build & Pre-build events to a project in visual studio. Go to the properties of the project and there will be a tab called 'Build Events'.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/42x5kfw4(v=vs.80).aspx
Should give you the necessary information.
Dragged the folder into the visual studios project.
Manually edited the folder entry in the csproject to do a recursive copy with "**"
Set the copy mode to Always
I'm tidying my projects. And I found the way to remove the object folder with adding:
%TEMP%
In my projects. But I want somehow to make this global setting or to auto delete my obj dirs after a build. Is there a way to do that?
I personally like having a specific Output folder in my project where I put all the compiled files.
I have the following command line in the Post-build events.
copy "$(TargetPath)" "$(SolutionDir)\Output\$(TargetFileName)"
This will copy the compiled file to the Output directory inside the Solution. You would need to add this to all the projects in your solution.
If you have any dependencies that also needs to be copied you could add something like this as well.
copy "$(ProjectDir)Dependencies\Language.xml" "$(SolutionDir)\Output\Extensions\Language.xml"
[EDIT]
You can try the following to have the file copied first, and then once that is done delete the object folder.
copy "$(TargetPath)" "$(SolutionDir)\Output\$(TargetFileName)"
rd /s /q "$(ProjectDir)\obj"
[EDIT2] Updated with screenshots to illustrate. :)
This is how my object folder normally would look like after compiling the project.
This is how it looks after compiling it with the above command. As you can see the folder is re-created after the event by Visual Studio, but the folder is empty.
You might want to double check that you are running Visual Studio with elevated permissions. To do so, simply right click on the Visual Studio and choose "Run as Administrator".
Are you using source control?
This comment sounds like you don't:
While archiving, those are unneeded megabytes.
("Archiving" sounds a bit like copying the whole project folder regularly to something like backup_yyyymmdd)
If you're not using source control, you should definitively consider starting to use it.
Apart from the general advantages (like, having a change history with dates and comments...), it has an out-of-the-box solution for your problem with the obj folders:
Every good source control software out there supports ignoring certain files or folders which you can define (ignoring means: they can never be committed to the source repository, you don't even see them in the list of changed files, not even when they were changed).
For example, in Mercurial (which I use) the ignore settings are saved in a file named .hgignore in the main folder (Git has the same, it's just called .gitignore).
My default .hgignore file for all Visual Studio projects looks like this:
syntax: glob
bin
obj
*.suo
*.user
The first line belongs to Mercurial's ignore syntax, the rest are the settings what to ignore.
You can see that the bin and obj folders are ignored...and they are ignored no matter in which subfolder they are!
So I don't have to care about where the obj folders actually are, and I don't have to delete them manually every time I build my solution. They are simply non-existent in my source control history.
Plus, I have a variation of Fuji's answer about putting everything in one single output folder:
I like to do this as well, but I prefer changing the output folders in Visual Studio's project settings instead of using post-build events.
The default output folders are:
bin\Debug\
bin\Release\
I change them to:
..\build\Debug\
..\build\Release\
This compiles everything into subfolders of a build folder which is at the same level like the .sln file (which means: all projects in the solution directly compile into the same folder).
It also reduces compile time because Visual Studio won't have to copy all the dependencies after compiling (because everything already is in the same folder).
(I do it mainly because of the compile time, because I ignore the bin and obj folders anyway in Mercurial as described above, so I don't care where they actually are)
I have a solution with many projects. There is actually a Core project and a few plugins. I changed OutputPath for all plugins so all binaries end up in the Core bin\debug folder. (this is necessary as the Core do not have a reference on plugins, hence it does not "include" plugins binaries when it is compiled.)
So basically my folder structure is as follow:
Solution
MySolution.sln
Plugin1\
Plugin2\
Core\bin\debug
Each plugin OutputPath is "..\Core\bin\debug". When I open the solution Visual Studio creates a folder "Core\bin\debug" in Solution's folder parent as if the relative path starts from .sln file. However when I build the solution the binaries are output to the correct path ("Solution\Core\bin\debug").
Core\bin\debug
It looks like a Visual Studio bug to me, but maybe I overlooked some option somewhere. Any ideas how to resolve this problem ?
PS: I know this not a critical issue as everything build and works fine, however I dislike the idea of meaningless folder hanging around
Rather than changing the output location of the plug-ins, what you could do is create a post-build script (Properties \ Build Events tab) for them that will copy the them to the Core folder. That would prevent the confusion with output folders.
This command line should do the trick for you:
copy "$(TargetPath)" "$(SolutionDir)Core\$(OutDir)"
If you need to copy .pdb and .config files as well, you can add more lines:
copy "$(TargetPath).pdb" "$(SolutionDir)Core\$(OutDir)"
copy "$(TargetPath).config" "$(SolutionDir)Core\$(OutDir)"
If you really want to do it with a single line, this should also work, though it's not as clean:
copy "$(TargetPath)*" "$(SolutionDir)Core\$(OutDir)"
If you're not using the same output path in both the main project and the add-ons, you'll need to replace $(OutDir) with a hard-coded value. If you have them set to target the typical "\bin\Debug" folder (or have just left the defaults in place), then you can get away with using the $(OutDir) value.
Instead of using "..\Core\bin\debug", use "$(SolutionDir)\Core\bin\debug".