What is the best practice for defining the target output folder for Debug/Release: Is it better to have separate folders for Debug/Release or should I use the same folder for both (when using .NET/C#)?
I have two separate solutions, so the projects of one solution can’t have a reference by project to a project of the other solution. So you are forced to add a reference to the assembly file directly.
This results in another problem: If you add a reference to another assembly via a file you can add only one instead of one for debug and one fore release (like you can do with libraries in C++). Another problem is that I have to add a reference, for example, to bin/Release/MyOtherProject/MyAssembly.dll. I think this is confusing, especially when building Debug and having referenced Release. => Build errors and version conflicts may occur.
Has anyone long experience in building into the same target folder in large projects and environments?
It is a more precise question related to Stack Overflow question Should we still make a difference between the release and debug output folders?.
We have been using the same directory for debug and release in .NET applications for 10 years and have never had a problem.
This approach makes numerous tasks substantially easier, such as building installs, copying custom DLL files to directories post-build, and versioning files in the output directories such as license files that are necessary for developers to run the application correctly.