在发布版本中找不到 wpf 字符串文件，但在调试 c# 中工作

Question

I have finished a very basic application (wpf/c#). The solution is made of 3 projects:

1. The main project for the app
2. The Class Library Project to store app resources (images and txt files)
3. The Setup project which I use to create exe file for distribution to other machines.

While the project works fine in debug mode when I deploy it using the Setup project and install on the computer I can access the image files from the Library Project (I can see there is a dll file for the library project in the application folder) but it fails to access the text files, complaining the path was not found. This is my very first time I completed the application and attempted to deploy it so am a bit at a loss why the setup does not provide correct references to the text files and yet it seems to work fine with image files which are located in the same library project. Can someone point me in the right direction where to look at it to troubleshoot?

I have cleaned and rebuilt all projects in the solution. retested in debug mode (works fine). tried to search msdn and StackOverflow but I cannot find any guidance I could use or follow.

I would like to be able to display text from the text files in the released/installed application version the same way it works in debug mode. At the moment it fails to find the relevant txt files.

Answer 1

Finally, I have managed to crack it. Posting the answer for anyone having the same problem. The issue here was not with the file path, even though I came up with a more clearer technique of building it, see my comments above. The problem was with the way Setup Project in VS2017 was creating a package. It is handling differently images and text files, even though both are in the same Library Project, essentially for text files I had to do the following to get it working:

Open File System in Setup Project

Create the 'Resources' Folder under 'Application Folder'

Set the 'Resource' folder 'AlwaysCopy' property to 'true'

In 'Resources' folder right-click and select Add> File...

Navigate to the folder with the files and select them all (make sure the files are setup as Resources or embedded resources)

Rebuild the Setup Project

.

So summarising I had to specifically tell Visual Studio to build the folder structure in the Application Folder during the install. Now when I run the installer the text files are included in the package and created during standalone installation. Also included a screenshot below.