Problems adding a UserControl referencing a C++/CLI wrapper to a unmanaged dll to a form

Question

My UserControl references a C++/CLI wrapper to an unmanaged C++ dll. When I try to add the UserControl to a form, I get a Visual Studio error, which says "Failed to create component 'userControl'", giving a System.IO.FileNotFoundException as the cause.

From what I've been able to determine, the problem stems from visual studio not copying the C++/CLI wrapper assembly's unmanaged dependencies. If I put the unmanaged dependencies on the system PATH, everything works fine.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

The easiest thing to do would be to include the actual .dll in your project, mark its build action as "Content", then set the Copy to Output Directory to "Always". This should get the .dll into your output directory so that your application can run, and just including the file in the project should put it in the project directory so that the designer can find it.

Be sure that your setup project includes a project output for the Content files from that project as well.

Edit

If those don't work, you can also edit the reference paths of the project itself (in the project properties), though I am not certain that this will affect the designer. If that doesn't then your only real option is to have the .dll in one of the system path directories.