How do I get .NET Core projects to copy NuGet references to the build output?

c# msbuild .net-core nuget csproj
chyyran picture chyyran · May 8, 2017 · Viewed 59.3k times · Source

I'm trying to write a plugin system with .NET Core, and one of my requirements are to be able to distribute the plugin DLL along with its dependencies to the user for install.

However, I can't figure out how to include my NuGet dependencies as a build artifact and have them output to the build folder, without having to use dotnet publish as a hack. Is there some way I can specify this in the .csproj file (project file)?

Answer

Martin Ullrich picture Martin Ullrich · May 8, 2017

You can add this to a <PropertyGroup> inside your csproj file to enforce copying NuGet assemblies to the build output:

<CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>true</CopyLocalLockFileAssemblies>

However, note that the build output (bin/Release/netcoreapp*/*) is not supposed to be portable and distributable, the output of dotnet publish is. But in your case, copying the assemblies to the build output is probably very useful for testing purposes. But note that you could also use the DependencyContext api to resolve the DLLs and their locations that are part of the application's dependency graph instead of enumerating a local directory.

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