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Equivalent to AssemblyInfo in dotnet core/csproj

People also ask

Is AssemblyInfo needed?

With the issue 2715 the idea was born, that these values can "flow into the Assembly". So that you have not to configure these fields in two different places. So if you do not want to configure more than these paramters, the the AssemblyInfo. cs is not needed.

Where is CS AssemblyInfo?

AssemblyInfo. cs file is created automattically when you create a windows application by Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. It is located under the folder "Properties". AssemblyInfo.

What is AssemblyInfo C#?

AssemblyInfo. cs contains information about your assembly, like name, description, version, etc. You can find more details about its content reading the comments that are included in it.


As you've already noticed, you can control most of these settings in .csproj.

If you'd rather keep these in AssemblyInfo.cs, you can turn off auto-generated assembly attributes.

<PropertyGroup>
   <GenerateAssemblyInfo>false</GenerateAssemblyInfo>
</PropertyGroup> 

If you want to see what's going on under the hood, checkout Microsoft.NET.GenerateAssemblyInfo.targets inside of Microsoft.NET.Sdk.


Those settings has moved into the .csproj file.

By default they don't show up but you can discover them from Visual Studio 2017 in the project properties Package tab.

Project properties, tab Package

Once saved those values can be found in MyProject.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>net461</TargetFramework>
    <Version>1.2.3.4</Version>
    <Authors>Author 1</Authors>
    <Company>Company XYZ</Company>
    <Product>Product 2</Product>
    <PackageId>MyApp</PackageId>
    <AssemblyVersion>2.0.0.0</AssemblyVersion>
    <FileVersion>3.0.0.0</FileVersion>
    <NeutralLanguage>en</NeutralLanguage>
    <Description>Description here</Description>
    <Copyright>Copyright</Copyright>
    <PackageLicenseUrl>License URL</PackageLicenseUrl>
    <PackageProjectUrl>Project URL</PackageProjectUrl>
    <PackageIconUrl>Icon URL</PackageIconUrl>
    <RepositoryUrl>Repo URL</RepositoryUrl>
    <RepositoryType>Repo type</RepositoryType>
    <PackageTags>Tags</PackageTags>
    <PackageReleaseNotes>Release</PackageReleaseNotes>
  </PropertyGroup>

In the file explorer properties information tab, FileVersion is shown as "File Version" and Version is shown as "Product version"


I do the following for my .NET Standard 2.0 projects.

Create a Directory.Build.props file (e.g. in the root of your repo) and move the properties to be shared from the .csproj file to this file.

MSBuild will pick it up automatically and apply them to the autogenerated AssemblyInfo.cs.

They also get applied to the nuget package when building one with dotnet pack or via the UI in Visual Studio 2017.

See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/customize-your-build

Example:

<Project>
    <PropertyGroup>
        <Company>Some company</Company>
        <Copyright>Copyright © 2020</Copyright>
        <AssemblyVersion>1.0.0.1</AssemblyVersion>
        <FileVersion>1.0.0.1</FileVersion>
        <Version>1.0.0.1</Version>
        <!-- ... -->
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

You can always add your own AssemblyInfo.cs, which comes in handy for InternalsVisibleToAttribute, CLSCompliantAttribute and others that are not automatically generated.

Adding AssemblyInfo.cs to a Project

  1. In Solution Explorer, right click on <project name> > Add > New Folder.

Add New Folder

  1. Name the folder "Properties".

Name folder Properties

  1. Right click on the "Properties" folder, and click Add > New Item....

Add New Item

  1. Select "Class" and name it "AssemblyInfo.cs".

Name file AssemblyInfo.cs

Suppressing Auto-Generated Attributes

If you want to move your attributes back to AssemblyInfo.cs instead of having them auto-generated, you can suppress them in MSBuild as natemcmaster pointed out in his answer.


Adding to NightOwl888's answer, you can go one step further and add an AssemblyInfo class rather than just a plain class:

enter image description here


I want to extend this topic/answers with the following. As someone mentioned, this auto-generated AssemblyInfo can be an obstacle for the external tools. In my case, using FinalBuilder, I had an issue that AssemblyInfo wasn't getting updated by build action. Apparently, FinalBuilder relies on ~proj file to find location of the AssemblyInfo. I thought, it was looking anywhere under project folder. No. So, changing this

<PropertyGroup>
   <GenerateAssemblyInfo>false</GenerateAssemblyInfo>
</PropertyGroup> 

did only half the job, it allowed custom assembly info if built by VS IDE/MS Build. But I needed FinalBuilder do it too without manual manipulations to assembly info file. I needed to satisfy all programs, MSBuild/VS and FinalBuilder.

I solved this by adding an entry to the existing ItemGroup

<ItemGroup>
   <Compile Remove="Common\**" />
   <Content Remove="Common\**" />
   <EmbeddedResource Remove="Common\**" />
   <None Remove="Common\**" />
   <!-- new added item -->
   <None Include="Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs" />
</ItemGroup>

Now, having this item, FinalBuilder finds location of AssemblyInfo and modifies the file. While action None allows MSBuild/DevEnv ignore this entry and no longer report an error based on Compile action that usually comes with Assembly Info entry in proj files.

C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.2\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\build\Microsoft.NET.Sdk.DefaultItems.targets(263,5): error : Duplicate 'Compile' items were included. The .NET SDK includes 'Compile' items from your project directory by default. You can either remove these items from your project file, or set the 'EnableDefaultCompileItems' property to 'false' if you want to explicitly include them in your project file. For more information, see https://aka.ms/sdkimplicititems. The duplicate items were: 'AssemblyInfo.cs'