When you create a new C# Metro style app in VS11 beta, it only has two references: one to Windows.winmd, which is a file and I get that; and one to “.NET for Metro style apps”, which appears to point to the .NETCore folder under Reference Assemblies and not to any file in particular. The File Type property for both references is “SDK”.
Am I right in guessing that the folder reference effectively references every file in that folder? Are there any particular compile-time things that go on there that are interesting? Is there a way I can create a folder which can be referenced the same way?
If you build the project using
msbuildon the console you will be able to see what exactly is happening. All the .Net references are passed to the compiler as/referencecompiler option, so I don’t think there is anything special or interesting happening there on the compile time.It seems that there is some special work done on
msbuildto include the references for Windows SDK and .Net, rather than a standard feature that can be used for other purposes. If you open thecsprojfile you can see that all .Net and Windows references are added automatically.