Thursday, January 8, 2009

WebPart wsp does not include dependent DLLs

I was trying to develop a webpart for SharePoint 2007 & WSS3 using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2005 Extensions, Version 1.1.

Everything worked just fine, until I found out that the WSP file created by the add-on does not include dependent DLLs (from other projects in the solution). I could not find any good solution, so finally I had the following options:

1. In post-build event, use ILMerge to merge all the DLLs into a single DLL with the name & key file of the webpart, and replace existing DLL with this new merged DLL.

2. Add the dependent DLL to the project files of the webpart. This way the WSP file includes the dependent DLL. An improvement: add the DLL file in the following directory: bin/Release/ (change the project file with notepad) - this way any new compilation will include the new DLL.

3. Probably the best option - use a 3rd party tool to create the WSP file - WSPBuilder for example.

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