How to Integrate ILMerge into Visual Studio Build Process to Merge Assemblies?

visual-studio visual-studio-2008 msbuild ilmerge
AMissico picture AMissico · Mar 31, 2010 · Viewed 67.2k times · Source

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.

  1. 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?

  2. How does this tie into a possible ILMerge.Targets file?

  3. Is it better to use the Post-build event?

Answer

Holistic Developer picture Holistic Developer · Oct 13, 2014

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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