Visual Studio Post-Build event - How to copy files to output (bin) directory (only if newer) if file(s) are in a subfolder

Question

How to copy needed binary files (e.g. dlls, icons, tools, doc) into the target directory in the bin folder?

There is an obvious integrated possibility: Including the fil

Answer 1

Answering my own question to share my knowledge.

Given you want to copy all files in a VS project´s subfolder "RuntimeEnv":

Under the build properties of any project file there is a tab "Build events" with Pre-build and Post-build commandline possibilities to include such copy or similar build requirements without setting up a TFS build definition.

There you could include batch like commands and have access to some prebuild variables. See for example the link in the question.

copy doesn´t provide enough features. In the following, I mention a solution for xcopy and robocopy

As I prefer robocopy.exe as very fast, reliable and a build-in option to copy only newer files (/XO), I use the following instead of a simple "copy" command :

robocopy.exe /XO "$(ProjectDir)RuntimeEnv" "$(TargetDir)." >nul 2>&1
exit 0

There are two specialties of robocopy worked around here:

1. The "." after the "$(TargetDir)" is necessary because robocopy doesn´t like paths ending with backslash which is the case here.

2. The last line is necessary because robocopy exits with a returncode containing the number of files copied, so "0" is not the same as successful as expected.

It would be possible to add some MSBuild target lines to change the expected returncode, but doing it in the Post-Build event is most simple.

HTH.

P.S. As Hans Passant pointed out in a comment, xcopy /D is an easier solution. It is- and if no other properties or parameters of robocopy are useful, this could be preferred.

This would then make the line:

xcopy.exe /D /Y "$(ProjectDir)RuntimeEnv\*.*" "$(TargetDir)"

The output lines of xcopy would not disturb normally, and give a hint what is happening at post-build - otherwise you could add >nul 2>&1 too.