No way to add ref/lib split assets to deps files outside a nuget package

I tried setting Reference (Private=false) and ReferenceCopyLocalPaths, same as what NuGet does, and noticed that the runtime assembly in ReferenceCopyLocalPaths was not added to the deps file.

I checked the inputs to GenerateDepsFile and there doesn’t appear to be one for runtime-only dependencies.

/cc @eerhardt

Here’s the sample I was trying to make work:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <Reference Include="Windows">
      <HintPath>C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.15063.0\Windows.winmd</HintPath>
      <Private>false</Private>
    </Reference>
  </ItemGroup>

  <!-- reference these so that they are downloaded, but exclude all assets so that we can reference manually  -->
  <PropertyGroup>
    <UapRefPackage>Microsoft.Private.CoreFx.UAP</UapRefPackage>
    <UapLibPackage>runtime.win10-x64.Microsoft.Private.CoreFx.UAP</UapLibPackage>
    <PrivateUAPVersion>4.4.0-preview2-25405-01</PrivateUAPVersion>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="$(UapRefPackage)" Version="$(PrivateUAPVersion)" ExcludeAssets="all" />
    <PackageReference Include="$(UapLibPackage)" Version="$(PrivateUAPVersion)" ExcludeAssets="all" />
    <!-- manually reference the WinRT assemblies -->
    <Reference Include="$(NuGetPackageRoot)$(UapRefPackage)\$(PrivateUAPVersion)\ref\uap10.1\System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.dll" Private="false" />
    <ReferenceCopyLocalPaths Include="$(NuGetPackageRoot)$(UapLibPackage)\$(PrivateUAPVersion)\runtimes\win10-x64\lib\uap10.1\System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.dll" />
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

This is a bit of a hack, but I could imagine folks trying to do similar stuff.

[ericstj]

That appears to make compile work, but not run. GenerateDepsFile doesn’t read the items to determine what to put in the deps file from packages, it just flows what NuGet put in there and “ExcludeAll” removed everything NuGet put in there.

Regardless, I’m not necessarily looking for a more elegant way to filter this NuGet package (although that is somewhat interesting). I’m looking for how we’d enable someone outside of a package having a different ref vs lib asset and having that work with the deps file.

[davkean]

We talked about this at standup, basically you would get most features for free if you just produced the same FileDefinitions instead of references as the NuGet asset raising task. Which would also make the grouping under the right SDK node work correctly.