Visual Studio 2010 setup project does not update dependent DLLs

Question

I have a solution S with contains executable X, and class library projects L1, L2, ... There is also a setup project P, and if I look in the Detected Dependencies folder of PI see L1.dll, L2.dll... P is set to remove previous versions if installed.

Next, I run the installer I built from P. I set the output directory to be a non-standard one (so X can write log data and so on to the install location). All is well.

Now I change one of the libraries, and part of X. Rebuild X. Rebuild P. I re-run the installer, and point it at the same directory as before. X.exe seems to be updated, but L1.dll is still the old version. Any suggestions as to why?

Answer 1

Try refreshing the dependencies on you setup project P (expand setup project P, context click on "Detected Dependencies" and select "Refresh Dependencies"), this will force the update of the dependent libraries. I am not entirely certain why this does not occur naturally, but I believe it may have to do with the build and deploy options within the solution's configuration manager.

I have a number of windows mobile applications in Visual Studio 2008 and as a precaution I always refresh the dependencies before creating a new production installer. I have had cases similar to yours and it can be very confusing to figure out why your software is not doing what you expect.