Question

I have a .dll and a .targets file in the same directory. Inside of that .targets file I would like to add the .dll to an ItemGroup item. However if I just add it similar to this:

<Example Include="Example.dll" />

The path to Example.dll appears to be resolving as relative to the .csproj that is including the .targets file. How can I add items to an ItemGroup in a .targets file with a relative path like this?

For example suppose I have:

C:\lib\Example.dll
C:\lib\Example.targets
C:\src\Example.csproj

When including the Example.dll from inside the .targets file the full path resolves to C:\src\Example.dll which is wrong, what I want is C:\lib\Example.dll. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Inside the .targets file, use this,

<Example Include="$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)\Example.dll" />

…that reserved property will resolve to the directory in which the .targets file resides, not the project file importing the .targets file, which is the default for relative path resolution.