Visual Studio building solution does not copy dll to bin folder, but building project does

Question

I have a visual studio 2013 update 4. I have a solution that includes multiple projects (all C#).

example:

• -MySolution
• -Webapi project ( references core project )
• -core project ( regular class library, contains nuget package for EntityFramework 6.1.2 )

If I build the solution and try to exec a webapi method it fails because EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll is not in the bin folder of the webapi project.

If however I build the core project alone, EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll is copied into the bin folder of the Webapi project and everything is fine.

Is there some bug or am I doing something wrong by building the solution and expecting the same result if I had built the projects in order?

It appears to be some Nuget oddity at first blush.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

"When you don't use the referenced DLL in your code at all, it will ignore the CopyLocal and won't copy it to your output directory." says the following link:

How does visual studio determine what to copy to the output directory with multi-project solutions?

Facing same problem and keeping with this hint, I made a dummy invocation in my library that referenced EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll and the issue was resolved:

string result = System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlFunctions.Char(65);

May be you should also give it a try.