.dll's are missing after rebuild/clean-build solution

Question

I have 3 projects in my solution and a bunch of 3rd party or company dlls. Each time I rebuild my project or clean solution, a lot of this dll's are deleted, therefore missing. It is pretty annoying to reference this dll files again and again after rebuilding. Can someone explain how to avoid this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The bin folder is just the binary output from a build, so when you clean your solution, all the assemblies in the bin folder get deleted. You should reference the assemblies from some other location. One suggestion is to create a Shared Resources folder within your project, copy your assemblies to that folder, then reference them from that folder. This way they won't get deleted from bin on a clean/rebuild and Visual Studio will copy them there as needed.

1. Right-click on the References folder in your project and choose Add Reference...
2. Use the browse functionality to locate the assemblies you want to reference (don't worry about manually copying them to/from your bin folder)
3. After the reference is added, right-click on the reference in your references list and choose Properties
4. Make sure the Copy Local property is set to True

This will ensure that assembly is copied to your bin folder on every build.