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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T17:35:08+00:00

When I build a Visual Studio project, the executable is written to the output

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When I build a Visual Studio project, the executable is written to the output directory specified in the projects Property Page.

I have a project that has some extra files (e.g., .ini file) that are used by the program.

How can I configure the project to copy the file to the output directory so that when the program runs, it has a copy of the other file in its CWD?

I checked the Property Page of the file and there was nothing useful other than an option to exclude it from the build (which is disabled), and the custom-build-tool command is empty (plus it is a plain-text file that does not need any processing).

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    While I was searching the file’s Property Page for a build-action field, I had a thought: set the custom build step to copy the file (manually). This turned out to be easier than I thought. I had figured it would require using cmd or other external executable (xcopy, robocopy, etc.), but that is not necessary.

    I set the Custom Build Step as follows:

    Command Line : copy $(InputFileName) $(OutDir)
Description  : Copying foobar...
Outputs      : $(InputFileName)

    Setting the outputs field (correctly) was critical in order to prevent VS from always thinking the project is out of date and requiring to be rebuilt (I’m not certain if it needs to be prefixed with $(OutDir)\).

    It is reflected in the Output window as such:

    Copying foobar...
        1 file(s) copied.
Compiling resources...
Linking...
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