Question

We have a CMD file which loads an MSBuild XML file and builds and publishes our VB .NET Web App. I noticed today that one of the user controls we’re using is not being copied to the UserControls folder in the output directory. However when I build and publish the project from within Visual Studio 2008 that file is there.

I believe the reason this is happening is because the file that is in the UserControls folder in the project is a shortcut to a file in a different solution within the same project. The ItemGroup XML in the MyProject.vbproj file looks like this:

<Content Include="..\OtherSolution\UserControlFile.ascx">
  <Link>UserControls\UserControlFile.ascx</Link>
</Content>

In the MSBuild.xml file we have, the following is being run after the solution has been built:

<MSBuild Projects="$(ProjectRootPath)\MyProject.vbproj" 
            Targets="_CopyWebApplication;_BuiltWebOutputGroupOutput" 
            Properties="OutDir=$(BuildFilesPath)\" />

Does anyone have any idea why the shortcut is not being copied to the OutDir? I’ve checked a bunch of questions on here, and tried Google, but there doesn’t seem to be solutions specific to this problem.

Thanks

Answer 1

We use a number of linked files in our projects, the only way we can get them to work is to set the ‘Copy to Output Directory’ property to ‘Copy Always’