Allow creating hard links to DLLs instead of copying them

[yodantauber]

Write-NuGetPackage generates an MSBuild "Copy" task in the targets file for each DLL specified with "bin:" in the autopkg file.

I would like to be able to pass "UseHardlinksIfPossible=true" to the Copy command, thereby creating hard links to the DLLs instead of copying them. In many native libraries this makes a huge difference - I have seen libraries with hundreds of megabytes worth of DLLs, and it takes time to copy them around.

[fearthecowboy]

Hmm.

That's not a terrible idea; I gotta think on that a bit.

[fearthecowboy]

I think I could make this work in the non app-store and non-windows-phone models. In those, they use additional elements to control crap going into the output.

The next version of the tools ended up requiring the addition of a MSBuild Tasks Extension DLL being embedded into the package (which makes it easier to add new and more complex actions into the package). A 'smarter' copy/hardlink task could certainly be done now.

I've got a really packed week, but I'm gonna see if I can squeeze it in this week somewhere ... no promises yet (but I think we can make sure it gets done in this month)

[yodantauber]

Thanks for trying to get this in!
Just to make sure I understand your comment correctly: what do you mean by "A 'smarter' copy/hardlink task could certainly be done now"? The regular MSBuild Copy task is already capable of hard-linking, it's only a matter of adding an attribute to the Copy element in the XML.

[fearthecowboy]

Well, that I did not know.

Hmm. Wonder how the hell I missed that?

I'll see about making an option for that.

[fearthecowboy]

Hmm. I can't see a reason not to make that the default, now that I think of it.

[fearthecowboy]

The next build will have this on by default.

[fearthecowboy]

I've got a new Development version posted that supports this. (the CopyToOutput methodology changed, and the default now turns this on)

use

  PS > update-coapptools –Development -killallpowershells

To update to my current Dev version (as of this moment, 2.4.164.0 )

As soon as I can get a bit more testing on this to make sure that it's at least fairly stable, and doesn't have any really broken things, I'll promote this to 'Beta'

[yodantauber]

I tested this on the latest development version (2.4.199.0) and it creates hard links indeed. Thanks!