Possible Duplicate:
How does Copy-local work?
I have following situation:
- there’s a project named OLAF.Tools, and that project references Microsoft.Data.SqlXml in C:\Program Files\SQLXML 4.0\bin\Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll. Reference Copy Local property is set to True. When I build that project in bin directory I can see both OLAF.Tools.dll and Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll
- there’s a console application named OLAF.Generator, and that application references OLAF.Tools (I’ve added reference using Project tab). When I build that application in bin directory I can see only OLAF.Generator.exe and OLAF.Tools.dll – there’s no Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll, what supprises me. Another wierd thing is that even though that dll is missing application is executing properly.
So my questions are:
- why Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll is not copied to bin folder of OLAF.Generator console application?
- how application resolves directory where Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll can be found?
Thanks,Pawel
EDIT 1: (after response from Marc Gravell)
@Marc Gravell: Your answer gave me food for thought, as I could swore that I could always see indirectly dependant assemblies in main application’s bin directory. And IMHO I don’t agree with you – with all due respect 🙂
Of course, references are not cascaded physically (we’re are talking about strong relationship to classes, interfaces etc) – and it’s exactly what I wanted to achieve when building OLAF.Tools library. That library provides a level of abstraction, it contains factories, and one factory accepts as a parameter string and returns interface. One particular implementation of that interface uses Microsoft.Data.SqlXml components. As a result,
OLAF.Generator uses interface that is located in OLAF.Tools, but doesn’t know about components in Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.
Apart from that (I think we both know what I tried to explain in preceding paragraph), when building application, dependant assemblies should be copied (if Copy Local is set to TRUE). I just wrote sample application, Project B lib has reference to Project A lib, and Project C (console app) has reference to Project B. In Project C’s bin directory I can see all: Project A.dll, Project B.dll & Project C.exe. So in discussed scenario, the reason why Microsoft.Data.SqlXml doesn’t end up in OLAF.Generator bin folder has something to do with that assembly itself.
Does compiler/visual studio knows that Microsoft.Data.SqlXml is located in directory which is automatically probed (or it’s in GAC) and this is the reason why that assembly is not copied?
EDIT 2: I’ve just checked GAC, and indeed, Microsoft.Data.SqlXml.dll is installed in GAC.
How does Copy-local work? log4net.dll is not being copied to MyProject output directory – this is answer to my question. When library is installed in GAC, it won’t be copied even though COPY LOCAL setting is used.