Is there a way to automatically include content files into asp.net project file?

asp.net msbuild csproj
Marko picture Marko · Mar 31, 2010 · Viewed 58.1k times · Source

I'm frequently adding a lot of content files (mostly images and js) to my ASP.NET project. I'm using VS publish system, and on publish, new files are not published until I include them in the project. I would like to auto include all files in specified directory. Is there a way to specify which directories should be auto-included in csproj file or anywhere else?

Answer

Chris picture Chris · Feb 24, 2012

Old thread, I know, but I found a way to do this that I keep forgetting, and on my search to find it one last time, I stumbled upon this question. The best way I've found to this is is to use the BeforeBuild target in the .csproj file.

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">
    <ItemGroup>
        <Content Include="**\*.less" />
    </ItemGroup>
</Target>

VS 2010 won't touch this section, and it ensures that your files are included as content every time the project is built.

Related questions

The CodeDom provider type "Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform.CSharpCodeProvider" could not be located

It's a WebApi project using VS2015. Step to reproduce: Create an empty WebApi project Change Build output path from "bin\" to "bin\Debug\" Run Everything is working perfectly until I changed Build Output path from "bin\" to "bin\Debug\" In …

Read More
How to Publish Web with msbuild?

Visual Studio 2010 has a Publish command that allows you to publish your Web Application Project to a file system location. I'd like to do this on my TeamCity build server, so I need to do it with the solution runner …

Read More
Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

I want an msbuild task to compile the views so I can see if there are compile time errors at well... compile time. Any ideas?

Read More