Assembly in GAC is not copied to output in project that references a project that references the GAC assembly with CopyLocal=true

Question

I have a "Project A" that references System.Web.Mvc with CopyLocal=TRue. System.Web.Mvc is in the GAC both on my local maching and on the buildserver.

I also have a "Project B" that references "Project A" in the output for "Project B" System.Web.Mvc is not copied to during the build.

I suspect that this is because it is in the GAC. Is this true? And can I do something to make MSBuild copy it to the output folder?

I read the answer from Muse VsExtensions in this thread, which talks about only the direct reference to the GAC, however we have an indirect reference through "Project A": .NET Reference "Copy Local" True / False Being Set Based on Contents of GAC

This blogpost is also related: http://deeperdesign.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/msbuild-assembly-dependencies-and-the-gac/

Answer 1

Did you check the .csproj file to verify that the reference does indeed contain the <Private>True</Private> tag? Copy local is unfortunately has 3 states in the xml - True, False and ... missing.

Answer 2

A pragmatic (read hack) solution is that I referenced System.Web.Mvc.dll in "Project B". This is definitively not the right solution, so please bring me a better solution :-)