Publish unmanaged DLL from referenced project

Question

I have a C# project (let's call it Driver) that uses an unmanaged DLL to interact with some hardware. I have another project that references Driver. When I build the project, the unmanaged DLL gets copied to the output directory as I want. However, when I publish the project as a ClickOnce application, the DLL does not get included in the application's files.

In the Application Files in project properties under Publish, I can see Driver's managed DLL, but the unmanaged DLL is not listed.

I'm certain there's an easy fix for this, but searches mostly lead to questions about including unmanaged DLLs in projects.

Thanks in advance,

Bjørn

Duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6173501/how-can-i-deploy-an-unmanaged-dll-with-a-wpf-click-once-application — Morten Frederiksen, Apr 30 '12 at 12:58
@MortenFrederiksen Adding it as an existing item is certainly an option. However I have several projects that depend on Driver, and adding the same DLL to all these projects seems a waste, since they are not directly dependent on the DLL. — Bjørn Madsen, Apr 30 '12 at 13:02
You can intentionally invoke DLL Hell, but you'll have to give up on ClickOnce deployment first. — Hans Passant, Apr 30 '12 at 13:05
refer http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winformssetup/thread/6d8200e2-8516-43db-a1c6-6ca45c3be873 — Romil Kumar Jain, May 03 '12 at 08:59

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '12 at 09:27

5

After researching this some more, it seems that the solution is to add the DLL as an existing item in all the projects that use it. It seems, however, very clunky if you have multiple projects depending on it.

answered May 25 '12 at 09:27

Bjørn Madsen

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You can add your dlls at a solution level, then add links of them in various projects, so you have the actual files only in one place – Phate01 Jun 04 '21 at 15:05

Publish unmanaged DLL from referenced project

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