A new feature that comes with Visual Studio 2010 beta SP1 is supported for deployment references. Reference deployment means that you can include all DLL - s to a deployment package to ensure that your application has all the assemblies that it must operate with it in the deployment package. In this posting I'll show you how to use the dependencies of deployment.
When I open my ASP.NET web application I have new option for reference when I right click on my web project: Add deployment Dependencies…
If you select it you'll see dialog where you can select the dependencies you want to add to your package project.
When the packets you need are selected click OK. Visual Studio adds the new folder to your project called _bin_DeployableAssemblies.
I tried to deploy my ASP.NET MVC project that uses the Windows azure knife after the addition of deployable references to my project.
Deployment went fine and the web role instance started without any problems. The only reference DLLs, that as local was the System.Web.mvc. All knife tricks came with deployable dependencies.
Visual Studio support deployable dependencies is great, because this way component providers can build definitions also components assemblies that are loaded dynamically executing will be in the deployment package.
