How do you publish Class Libraries in Visual Studio?

Question

I have a MVC web application that I am developing in Visual Studio 2010. Along side my MVC project in my solution I also have 2 Class Library projects.

When I right click the MVC project in the solution explorer I get (among others) these options: Build Deployment Package, Publish..., and Package/Publish Settings.

These options are not available for the 2 Class Library projects, so prior to uploading any code I am currently putting everything in a deployment folder on my local machine using the Publish... option for the MVC project and just copy & pasting the other 2 projects in windows explorer.

I would very much like to use the Publish... option to deploy all 3 projects using FTP to our server.

I have discovered that if I change the Output Type of the 2 Class Library projects from Class Library to Console Application then I get the options to Publish... etc., but they aren't Console Applicationss so I don't really want to do this.

My question is, how can I , using Visual Studio 2010 publish Class Library projects using FTP?

UPDATE Turns out I'm a numpty!

Because the MVC app references the 2 class libraries, the .dlls for them are already included in the bin folder for the MVC app and I didn't need to include the other projects when I publish.

Are the class libraries referenced by the MVC project? – ajg Aug 21 '14 at 10:30 — ajg, Aug 21 '14 at 10:30
yes they are referenced by the MVC project – Ben Aug 21 '14 at 10:35 — Ben, Aug 21 '14 at 10:35

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '14 at 10:41

7

You shouldn't need to separately publish the class library projects. When you publish the MVC project it will include any references the project has. As your MVC project references the 2 class library projects, when you publish it the class libraries will be included.

answered Aug 21 '14 at 10:41

ajg

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You are quite correct, I think at some point in the past I started to do it the way I described and never tried it without adding the 2 project folders manually. I just deleted them and everything works fine because the `.dll`s for the class libraries are in the MVC apps `bin` folder. – Ben Aug 21 '14 at 10:43

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 28 '18 at 08:56

1

Might this one help

Change Solution Configuration to Release mode (by default it may be debug)
Click on Solution Explorer and Rebuld the library project.

This will release the dlls to [yourProjectFolder]\bin\Release

answered Feb 28 '18 at 08:56

Akbar Badhusha

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

You need to customize how deployment process collects files you want to include in your deployment package.

Since your question is about Visual Studio 2010, I've found a Q&A here in StackOverflow that will guide you to the right direction in terms of including additional files (like your class library assemblies) as part of your deployment:

How do you include additional files using VS2010 web deployment packages?

How do you publish Class Libraries in Visual Studio?

3 Answers3