Exclude output referenced (DLLs) of other projects from project (VSS question)

Question

This has to do with source control, I'm using VSS and the Visual Studio 2008 plugin. When the DLL of a referenced project gets included in a project (and checked into VSS), on the next build it will fail because those files aren't checked out as part of the build process and will be read only.

I could exclude the entire bin folder and all dlls, but that is where I put my static dlls (ie. the ones that aren't rebuilt as part of the solution) and interestingly, Visual Studio treats dlls other than outputs of other products as excluded files just fine.

In VS2005, the VSS plug in didn't automatically add the output of referenced projects as files pending check in, but in VS2008, it does.

Anyone run into this issue or find a work around?

Answer 1

It's better to not check in the bin folders at all. Move the dependencies to a common lib folder, and reference them from there. That will make sure they're copied into the bin folder. You can then explicitly check in this lib folder.

Other files/folders to avoid checking are the obj directory and the ncb file. I'm not sure how "smart" the VSS integration is in this case.