Shared DLLs Revert Back

Question

I have two separate projects/solutions. One is an ASP.NET web app and the other is a console app that runs as a WebJob on Azure. These two separate projects/solutions share some common projects' DLLs.

We work on these shared projects through the web project's solution in Visual Studio and when done, I copy and paste the DLL's into the bin folder of the console app.

When I compile the console app, I notice that the shared DLL's revert back to a previous version. I know this because I see the Date Modified dates of those shared DLL's. The moment I compile the console app, they go back to previous versions.

Why is this happening and how do I prevent it?

Answer 1

You definitely should not drop assemblies into output folder by hand as they will be overwritten from whatever location build takes them from. If you have to do it manually - copy files over original location. To debug - enable verbose logging for build and carefully check where assemblies are copied from.

Automated solution integrated with the build is better approach.

Standard solution for sharing assemblies between project is NuGet. As most basic solution you can just use file share to drop packages. Check out guidance for continuous integration build system you are using as there is probably recommended nuget source (ie package feed in VSTS).