Question

I have a project in Visual Studio. I need to deploy some 3rd party files along with my code. Typically I would put this files in a “Resources” directory and set the Build Action on each file to “Content” and the Copy To Output Directory to “Copy if newer”.

Is there anyway I can set these directives at the folder level. The current project I am working with has dozens of such files and a couple of sub folders. I’d like to be able to make the entire directory as “Content” and “Copy if newer”.

Answer 1

Create the project. Add one file as Content. Unload the project and edit the *proj file manually.

 <ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="myfolder**\*.dll**">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>

And then in the content-ItemGroup I would replace that singe file with some MsBuild wildcard expression, *.dll, or whatever.