Stop Visual Studio from copying Nuget Packages in the output dir

Question

Disclaimer: This is a .Net Framework specific problem, that doesn't happen in .Net Core.

I am currently wokring on a project, that works as an AddIn of a larger project. I'd like to set the output path of my project to the AddIn folder of the larger project then start the larger project with the debug-properties of my project, so I don't have to copy and attach to project each time manually.

Any reference I have is shared with and managed from the larger project, which means i don't have (and should not) copy them to the AddIn Folder.

I included code from this answer to my .csproj (VS 19/new format)

  <ItemDefinitionGroup>
  <Reference>
    <Private>False</Private>
  </Reference>
  <ProjectReference>
     <Private>False</Private>
  </ProjectReference>
  </ItemDefinitionGroup>

to exclude project- and regular references, but in .Net Framework all .dlls from my Nuget packages are also copied to the output path. I was looking for a way to disable that too, but haven't found one.

Is there a way to stop .dlls from Nuget packages to be copied to the output path in .Net Framework?

why do not you publish nuget packages of the project to a AddIn? wont that help? — Maytham Fahmi, Mar 27 '22 at 19:49
@Azzarrel, it would be great if you could accept and upvote :) — Halo, Apr 20 '22 at 15:20

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 31 '22 at 13:57

Take a look at this github post. Other than that, @Maytham covered it perfectly:

why do not you publish nuget packages of the project to a AddIn? wont that help?

He's right. That should help. But, just to recap the github post:

You could turn off runtime access from every package:

<ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Newtonsoft.Json" Version="12.0.1" ExcludeAssets="runtime" />
</ItemGroup>

Or you could do it for all packages:

<ItemDefinitionGroup>
    <PackageReference ExcludeAssets="runtime" />
</ItemDefinitionGroup>

Once you have that, make a CopyNuGetDependencies (or whatever you want to call it) project with a different output path. Make sure it reference to all NuGet packages - but without ExcludeAssets. It's soley responsable for copying NuGet packages to the output directly.

That should stop all of the issues.

Thanks. this is the right solution, however it only works on 4.7.2 or newer; 4.7.1 seems to be broken, but I haven't yet dug up a reference that confirms. — antiduh, Mar 31 '22 at 16:52

Stop Visual Studio from copying Nuget Packages in the output dir

1 Answers1