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I want to merge one .NET DLL assembly and one C# Class Library project referenced by a VB.NET Console Application project into one command-line console executable.
I can do this with ILMerge from the command-line, but I want to integrate this merging of reference assemblies and projects into the Visual Studio project. From my reading, I understand that I can do this through a MSBuild Task or a Target and just add it to a C#/VB.NET Project file, but I can find no specific example since MSBuild is large topic. Moreover, I find some references that add the ILMerge command to the Post-build event.
How do I integrate ILMerge into a Visual Studio (C#/VB.NET) project, which are just MSBuild projects, to merge all referenced assemblies (copy-local=true) into one assembly?
How does this tie into a possible ILMerge.Targets file?
Is it better to use the Post-build event?
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ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple . NET assemblies into a single assembly. ILMerge takes a set of input assemblies and merges them into one target assembly. The first assembly in the list of input assemblies is the primary assembly.
ILRepack is a tool that allows you to merge multiple assemblies into a single assembly. This can be useful when you deploy an application that has a few dependencies. In this case, you can merge all the dll and the exe into a single exe file, so it's easier to deploy it. It's also useful if you create a NuGet package.
The "MSBuild ILMerge task" (or MSBuild.ILMerge.Task) NuGet package makes this process quite simple. It defaults to merging any "copy local" references into your main assembly.
Note: Although the packages have similar names, this one is different from ILMerge.MSBuild.Tasks that Davide Icardi mentioned in his answer. The one I'm suggesting here was first published in August 2014.
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