3rd party XML documentation files in NuGet packages are not copied to my project's build folder

[fizxmike]

I've dug around for a solution to this problem, but I only find issues related to dotnet publish not including a project's xml documentation. My issue is that XML documentation files in NuGet packages are not copied to my project's build folder. I hope the distinction is clear to a human (google couldn't get it).

Steps to reproduce

Add some_other_library nuget package which includes xml documentation to you project. Do dotnet build

Expected behavior

The some_other_library.xml is included in the build (output) folder like so:

(screenshot from output of VS 2017)

Actual behavior

some_other_library.xml file is not present in the build (output) folder:

(screenshot of output of dotnet cli)

Environment data

dotnet --info output:

.NET Command Line Tools (2.1.101)

Product Information:
 Version:            2.1.101
 Commit SHA-1 hash:  6c22303bf0

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Windows
 OS Version:  10.0.14393
 OS Platform: Windows
 RID:         win10-x64
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.1.101\

Microsoft .NET Core Shared Framework Host

  Version  : 2.0.6
  Build    : 74b1c703813c8910df5b96f304b0f2b78cdf194d

[livarcocc]

@wli3 you were looking at something right this. Can you comment?

[wli3]

give me some time i need to find the related issue

[wli3]

Sorry for the delay. It has similar root cause with #1458

[wli3]

@fizxmike there are some work around in #1458 a solution is still work in progress. cc @nguerrera

[MonDeveloper]

This limitation is really painfull when the xml documentation are the one describing the model packed with NuGET and used on the WebAPI contracts where something like swagger is used to self document the WebApi themselves, in such a case there's no possibility to auto-describe the contracts (since it is autodiscovered using the xml documentations)

[wuchang]

怎么解决？

[sergiodank]

The following solution helped me. Add it in you .csproj file for project which is building:

<ItemGroup>
	<PackageReference Include="{PackageName}" Version="{PackageVersion}" GeneratePathProperty="true"/>
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="CopyXMLFromPackages" AfterTargets="Build">
    <Copy SourceFiles="$(PkgPackage_Name)\lib\netcoreapp3.1\{PackageName}.xml" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
</Target>

[Rick-van-Dam]

Any timeframe when this is getting fixed? Its already been 2 years ago this issue was opened and is a breaking change compared to the old system.

I really want my csproj to just copy all documentation xml files and pdb files to the output directory just like it used to do.

The workarounds that were mentioned do not work. Tried to do this with msbuild but failed since it only includes 1 of the xml files...:

<PackageReferenceFiles Include="$(NugetPackageRoot)\%(PackageReference.FileName)\%(PackageReference.Version)\**\*.xml" />

[blacksnake-rus]

Any timeframe when this is getting fixed? Its already been 2 years ago this issue was opened and is a breaking change compared to the old system.

Try this:

<ItemGroup>
	<PackageReference Include="MyNuget" Version="0.0.2526">
		<CopyToOutputDirectory>lib/netcoreapp3.1/*.xml</CopyToOutputDirectory>
	</PackageReference>
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="CopyXMLFromPackagesForBuild" AfterTargets="Build">
	<ItemGroup>
		<PackageReferenceFiles Condition="%(PackageReference.CopyToOutputDirectory) != ''" Include="$(NugetPackageRoot)$([MSBuild]::Escape('%(PackageReference.Identity)').ToLower())/%(PackageReference.Version)/%(PackageReference.CopyToOutputDirectory)" />
	</ItemGroup>
	<Copy SourceFiles="@(PackageReferenceFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(OutDir)" />
</Target>

<Target Name="CopyXMLFromPackagesForPublish" BeforeTargets="PrepareForPublish">
	<ItemGroup>
		<PackageReferenceFiles Condition="%(PackageReference.CopyToOutputDirectory) != ''" Include="$(NugetPackageRoot)$([MSBuild]::Escape('%(PackageReference.Identity)').ToLower())/%(PackageReference.Version)/%(PackageReference.CopyToOutputDirectory)" />
	</ItemGroup>
	<Copy SourceFiles="@(PackageReferenceFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(PublishDir)" />
</Target>

[Rick-van-Dam]

That means I have to do that for every nuget package and need to know if said nuget package has a netcoreapp3.1 folder... This means my customers (other developers) cannot use the package manager and have to manually edit the csproj for packages they add. Not a very good solution in my case.

To give a bit more context this is for a game engine, currently we have a integrated nuget (2.14) package manager that lets you install plugins (which are nuget packages) but in order to support the newer netstandard and netcore we want to upgrade nuget. Since the newer nuget contains many breaking changes that make this hard to do we are now looking how far we could get if we just used the default tooling (thus having all dependencies in a csproj).

[JoFrMueller]

Also this approach doesn't work on Linux or docker containers.

Any news on this? Does anyone know how to transfer the csproj hack to support Linux or docker environments as well?

What we're currently doing is basically running a script during deployment to extract the NuGet XML content and put it next to the publish output. This solution is !!!terrible!!! but we don't have another one for now...