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Is it possible to remove a project reference from the command line? And if so, how? Imagine I have two projects in a solution: WPF project A, and Class Library B. A has a project reference to B so that it will depend on the output of project B. Now I wan't to remove the project reference from the command line as to be able to automate in our build. Looking as the .csproj file the project reference looks something like this.

<ProjectReference Include="..\B\B.csproj"> <Project>{7B68745C-382E-4272-897D-123A0AD80391}</Project> <Name>B</Name> </ProjectReference>
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ProjectReference is an item, you can add the Item to be conditionally excluded inside a conditioned ItemGroup:

<PropertyGroup> <ExcludeReference Condition="'$(ExcludeReference)'==''">false</ExcludeReference> </PropertyGroup> <ItemGroup Condition="'$(ExcludeReference)'=='true'"> <ProjectReference Include="..\B\B.csproj"> <Project>{7B68745C-382E-4272-897D-123A0AD80391}</Project> <Name>B</Name> </ProjectReference> </ItemGroup>

From the command line you can pass:

MsBuild SomeProject.proj /p:ExcludeReference=true

UPDATE:

You can have your optional reference in a separate project and import it:

ConditionalReferences.proj

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <ItemGroup> <ProjectReference Include="..\B\B.csproj"> <Project>{7B68745C-382E-4272-897D-123A0AD80391}</Project> <Name>B</Name> </ProjectReference> </ItemGroup> </Project>

And in your .csproj

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <PropertyGroup> <ExcludeReference Condition="'$(ExcludeReference)'==''">false</ExcludeReference> </PropertyGroup> <Import Project="ConditionalReferences.proj" Condition="'$(ExcludeReference)'=='false'"/> </Project>
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5 Comments

Thanks I didn't know this. Should be helpful when trying to create an desktop app that builds on both x86 and 64. However in this case I really want to remove the reference as we're packaging up a sample project in our solution for further distribution.
@vidstige Why this doesn't work for you? It will remove the reference you mention.
@vidstige If this is not the case you may be looking for something like this stackoverflow.com/questions/3788605/… Conditional Compilation or Conditional Atribute.
The reference will still be there inside the csproj file, while I would like to remove it so that it is not inside the file. The reason is I'm sending the file to someone else.
@vidstige please review my update. That will allow you to have some conditional configuration in a separate file so you don't need share that with someone else.

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