Copy files to output directory using csproj dotnetcore

Question

So my issue is pretty simple. I have some files that I want to be copied to the build output directory whether it is a debug build or a release publish. All of the informati

Answer 1

While this helped me get my issue sorted, it didn't work for all files in a sub-directory. I also used Content Include rather than Content Update;

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.1</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="layouts\*.*">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>  
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Answer 2

<PropertyGroup>
    <PostBuildEvent>xcopy "$(ProjectDir)Xml" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)Xml" /S /F /I /R /Y</PostBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>

or

<PropertyGroup>
    <PostBuildEvent>copy /Y "$(ProjectDir)MyXml.xml" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)Xml"</PostBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>

Answer 3

I had the requirement for a selection of HTML templates to be consumable both client-side and server-side (Handlebars js)

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <Content Update="wwwroot\html-templates\**\*.*">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Answer 4

Place this in your .csproj file replacing nlog.config with the desired filepath. Then simply save it and build your project:

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Update="Nlog.config">
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
  </Content>
</ItemGroup>

Answer 5

There's quite a few ways to achieve your goals, depending on what your needs are.

The easiest approach is setting the metadata (CopyToOutputDirectory / CopyToPublishDirectory) items conditionally (assuming .txt being a None item instead of Content, if it doesn't work, try <Content> instead):

<ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <None Update="foo.txt" CopyToOutputDirectory="PreserveNewest" />
</ItemGroup>

If more control is required, the most versatile approach is to add custom targets that hooks into the build process in the csproj file:

<Target Name="CopyCustomContent" AfterTargets="AfterBuild">
  <Copy SourceFiles="foo.txt" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
</Target>
<Target Name="CopyCustomContentOnPublish" AfterTargets="Publish">
  <Copy SourceFiles="foo.txt" DestinationFolder="$(PublishDir)" />
</Target>

This copies a file to the respective directories. For more options for the <Copy> task see its documentation. To limit this to certain configurations, you can use a Condition attribute:

<Target … Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == 'Release' ">

This Condition attribute can be applied both on the <Target> element or on task elements like <Copy>.

Answer 6

Assuming you have an assets folder in your root directory. You can name it as you want. This is just an example:

your-project.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <ItemGroup>
    <AssetsSourceFiles Include="assets/**/*.*"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <Target Name="CopyCustomContent" AfterTargets="AfterBuild">
    <Copy SourceFiles="@(AssetsSourceFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
  </Target>
</Project>

this copies only the content of the assets folder to the output root without wrapping it into the assets folder. But if you want to copy with the folder itself, you can use the following code:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="assets\**\*.*">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>