I was using Visual Studio 2019 on a WPF C# project for a win app. I found a way to embed all DLLs to the exe. This is not longer valid with VS2022

Question

I was using Visual Studio 2019 on a WPF C# project for a win app. This app was configure with old style not with SDK-Style projects. I wanted to have all DLLs files embedded into the executable so I can just have one single exe file. This is not longer valid with Visual Studio 2022 and the new SDK-Style project. For some reason the same solution doesn't work there.

I tried the same thing I had in my previous project:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
  <Target Name="AfterResolveReferences">
    <ItemGroup>
      <EmbeddedResource Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)" Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.dll'">
        <LogicalName>%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.DestinationSubDirectory)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Filename)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)</LogicalName>
      </EmbeddedResource>
    </ItemGroup>
  </Target>

Now with the VS 2022 and the SDK-Style project I needed to change a lot more thing in the .vcproj file to get the same functionality I have to get the single file application functionality.

The Import tag doesn't work anymore because it says that it is adding the targets anyway so it is duplicated. I found a way to not to use it and have the Target to be at the end of the build phase.

<Target Name="PostBuild" AfterTargets="PostBuildEvent">
    <Exec Command="echo executing the post build event" />
    <ItemGroup>
      <EmbeddedResource Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)"
                        Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.dll'">
          <LogicalName>%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.DestinationSubDirectory)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Filename)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)</LogicalName>
      </EmbeddedResource>
    </ItemGroup>
   </Target>

The problem now is that, the embedded stuff is not working for some reason and I cannot find anywhere on the internet a solution for this problem. It is like every one is using the old style method and that's it. Maybe it is not possible anymore.

Here is a post from 14 years ago: Embedding DLLs in a compiled executable

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 06 '23 at 19:50

0

Costura fody still works if you want to just embed references, just download it in nuget packages.

Just install it into your project and build your source, and it should embed all the reference DLLs into your executable. No extra steps needed.

answered Aug 06 '23 at 19:50

Laxion

39
1
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I was using Visual Studio 2019 on a WPF C# project for a win app. I found a way to embed all DLLs to the exe. This is not longer valid with VS2022

1 Answers1