How to publish additional files into bin folder

Question

My .net web app project also includes some unmanaged dlls as additional files. These are a couple of levels deep in subfolders.

When I publish this project I need these files to be copied to the bin folder alongside all the other binaries.

No matter what settings I try, the best I can get is for them to be published into their existing folder structure which is not where I need them to be.

I've created a PostBuild event to copy the files and this works when building locally but not when publishing to a server. I've not been able to get PostPublish events to work in the same way.

Is there another way to achieve this?

Note this is similar but not the same as a previous question: Publish unmanaged DLL from referenced project

Answer 1

I have a similar setup. 2 projects in my solution, one .NET Core and the other C++. When I am going to publish the dotnetcoreapp2.2 I want to include the precompiled C++ DLL from the other project. @JuanR's answer is not working for me, though it is already pretty close to my version. It looks like the <ItemGroup> needs to be in the <Target> tag.

<Target Name="PrepublishScript" BeforeTargets="PrepareForPublish">
  <ItemGroup>
    <DataModelFiles Include="$(ProjectDir)..\MyCppProject\bin\Release\MyCppProject.dll" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <Copy SourceFiles="@(DataModelFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(PublishDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="false" />
</Target>

Answer 2

Try using an after-publish task.

You can create an item group for copy:

<ItemGroup>
  <binFilesToCopy Include="$(OutDir)\somepath\to\yourexternalDLLFolder\*" />
  <!-- Add more folders/files you want to copy here -->
</ItemGroup>

Then add a target for after publishing:

<Target Name="AfterPublish">
    <Copy SourceFiles ="@(binFilesToCopy)" DestinationFolder ="$(OutDir)\bin" />
</Target>

I did this mostly from memory so double-check for syntax, but get you the idea.