未将引用的ClassLibrary的从属DLL添加到应用程序的BIN中

Question

There are so many questions posted about this issue. I believe i have read them all and still not having much luck. I have a VS2015 project where i can do all that i have described below without issue. Also note that the process i went through to move the applications and class libraries from 2015 to 2017 was to fully rebuild them in 2017. In any case, i created a new solution in 2017 with new application and class library to prove my issue.

1. I created a new library call ClassLibrary and a new asp.net web app called WebApplication .
2. In ClassLibrary i then added a nuget for testing (i have also tested this with a file reference to a 3rd party DLL). In this case i added the AjaxControlToolkit 18.1.0 for testing.
3. Then in WebApplication project i reference ClassLibrary

I would expect this simple solution and project referencing to copy the dependent DLLS of ClassLibrary to WebApplication project bin. It does not. Prior to moving to VS 2017 this would (and still does in VS 2015) copy the dependency DLL of ClassLibrary in WebApplication's BIN. In the VS2017 project i described above the AjaxControlToolkit is not copied to the BIN, i only see a ClassLibrary.dll but none of its dependencies.

I have tried to "use" the AjaxControlToolkit in the WebApplication project code as some of the posts suggest. This does not work as the assembly is not available in the project and i get build errors. I've modified the .csproj files in so many different ways based on suggestions i have found on Stack, nothing works.

Whats even more strange is that i see the DLL in the bin but not listed in the project References. Even though the DLL is in the bin i am unable to work with it.

What is going on? This is such a simple exercise of referencing and after spending two days on Google searching on this it seems crazy that so many have this issue. Why are these DLLs not flowing all the way to the parent application BIN???

Thanks

Answer 1

In my post i mentioned that these projects originally in VS2015 were then recreated in VS2017. This process converted the original Web Site projects to Web Application projects.

As mentioned here , in a Web Site project when a ClassLibrary is referenced as a project reference "Copies of dependent assemblies, XML document files, license files, resource files, and so on." (this includes installed Nugets in the ClassLibrary) are copied to the project BIN. This is not the case with Web Applications. See here for the differences. Installing the NuGet wherever it is needed is required, it will not be inherited from child references as it is with Web Site projects.