Is there any standard for post build events within Visual Studio?

Question

I am working on a VS solution that utilizes the post-build events to copy files into a deployment project that packages the files. Does anyone know if there is any best practice in how to move files around to place in an MSI?

Answer 1

As long as you copy all the dlls, exes, help files, icon files, resources ( but not .pdb), you are OK.

Why no pdb? Because pdb is debugging file, and it is there for debugging purpose. So in your release build, you don't need to have them.

Answer 2

As long as you are sure that you never want something else that the latest release build in your package, you are fine. But if you want to be prepared for "repackaging" scenarios, for example, to have an option for easily exchanging a single file in an existing package, you should consider to separate the build process from the "copy to the deployment project" process.