Question

I have an asp.net mvc project and reference a dll to a class library. I would like the dll to appear in the bin folder of my asp.net mvc project (the latest version after building the asp.net project). This does not happen depite the dll’s property ‘copy local’ being ‘true’. Is this possible anyway?

Thanks.

C

Answer 1

If the class library project is in the same solution as your MVC project, you could set the build directory of the class library to be the bin of your MVC app.

This will help if you’re not sure how
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165410(v=VS.90).aspx

If your setup precludes you from changing the output directory, another solution may be to set up a pre build step in the mvc app and use xcopy to copy the dll.

xcopy /y /r /i "$(SolutionDir)ClassLibrary\bin\myClassLibrary.dll" "$(TargetDir)"
if errorlevel 1 goto BuildEventFailed

Though, I’m a little curious why the dll isn’t being copied automatically. Are you using any of the types in the class library explicitly; creating instances of, or inheriting from, or anything that would indicate to the compiler you do indeed need this dll? I think VS tries to be helpful and not copy binaries it feels are “useless”