Visual Studio: How to "Copy to Output Directory" without copying the folder structure?

c# visual-studio-2010
Andy picture Andy · Sep 11, 2013 · Viewed 81.2k times · Source

I have a few dll files in \lib folder of my project folder. In the property page of dll, I have selected "Build Action" as "Content" and "Copy to Output Directory" as "Copy always".

After build I am actually getting the dll copied but they are inside \bin\Release\lib and not in \bin\Release.

Is there a way to copy dll files to \bin\Release (and not to \bin\Release\lib) without writing a post-build script or resorting to nant etc?

Answer

Daniel Zeitlin picture Daniel Zeitlin · Jan 28, 2016

instead of <Content> use <ContentWithTargetPath> and specify target path, like this:

<ItemGroup>
  <ContentWithTargetPath Include="lib\some_file.dat">
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    <TargetPath>some_file.dat</TargetPath>
  </ContentWithTargetPath>
</ItemGroup>

Note that this entry may not be visible from Visual Studio (2012, 2015, 2017), but once manually added to the csproj, it will appear in Visual Studio. The target path will not be editable through the UI though.

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