Development and deployment - how to get service assemblies into their proper location?

Question

Hi,

This has to be a pretty common issue, and while we have answers, I'm trying to determine if there is any better way. We are using IoC / DI with structuremap. This means that our final application (an Asp.Net MVC 2 app) requires the presence of some assemblies which aren't being referenced anywhere else (our implemention of IRepository, etc).

In VS, I've added a Post Build event that simply goes to our lib folder (containing the already build assemblies which are not part of our solution) and copies everything with *Repository*.dll to the $(TargetDir).

On the build server, were we are also building packages for deployment (and hoping to automate deployment to some environments), I've done something similar to get those assemblies.

Is there any better way though? Or do you just accept that this is one of the issues with IoC and have to remember to add a bit of script to include the service assemblies as part of the process?

Thanks Andy

Answer 1

You should be able to create a project of any type, and then reference everything you need. Then just copy everything, except the dll from that project. At least you don't have to edit a lot of scripts just to add a new project..?

Answer 2

I suppose you could add the assemblies you want into your project just as linked files, not as assembly references, and then mark them as 'Content' as the build type and 'Copy if newer' so they will get copied to your bin folder.

Never tried this, but it ought to work.