Visual Studio pré build event delete reference - visual-studio

Question

I'm going to spare you the trouble of explaining why I want to do this, but I'm looking for a way to remove a reference to a dll when a project is build. I'm not talking about an unused reference, but a reference that might contain the same namespaces and the same classes which my project is using. I was thinking of a pré build event command line, but I don't know what the command will look like.
PS: For those of you who do care why I want this. I have a template project A that contains classes that use base classes defined in another project B. This template project (A) its only function is to be packed up in a Nuget package to then be deployed in multiple other projects, for simplicity sake imagine 3 projects C, D and E. Using the Nuget in projects C, D & E will generate all the classes and put a reference to the dll of project B, because we need the Base classes. At the moment I also get a reference to the DLL of template project (A). This is what should not happen because all classes with the same namespaces will exist in project A and in projects C, D & E. This is why I want to automatically remove the reference to the template project (A).
Thanks in advance.
Kind regards,
Yannick

Answer 1

Visual Studio pré build event delete reference
Do you want to delete the reference project A in the build event command line when you build the project? If yes, I am afraid there is no directly build event command line to do this, you can create a power shell script to delete the reference, then execute this power shell script in the build event.
However, just as imp said "Why do you need a reference to the Package A, if it's not going to be used at all?". So as a workaround, you can not add reference project A to the project C, D and E, To accomplish this, you can target the dll files to the tools folder instead of lib folder in the .nupsec file:
<files>
<file src="bin\Debug\ProjectA.dll" target="Tools\ProjectA.dll" />
</files>
The .nuspec of Project A should be:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package >
<metadata>
<id>MyModels</id>
<version>1.0.0</version>
<authors>Tester</authors>
<owners>Tester</owners>
<requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>
<description>Package description</description>
<releaseNotes>Summary of changes made in this release of the package.</releaseNotes>
<copyright>Copyright 2018</copyright>
<tags>Tag1 Tag2</tags>
</metadata>
<files>
<file src="bin\Debug\ProjectB.dll" target="lib\Net45\ProjectB.dll" />
<file src="bin\Debug\ProjectA.dll" target="Tools\ProjectA.dll" />
</files>
</package>
Then pack this .nuspec file, generate the nuget package, install this package to the project, the reference Project A will not be added to the project.
Hope this helps.