PublishSingleFile does not working with ClassLibrary

[haonanttt]

Describe the bug

PublishSingleFile does not working with ClassLibrary

Steps to reproduce the bug

1.Create a Blank Project
2.Create a Blank Class Library
3.Add Class Library Refrence to Main Project
4.Publish UnPackaged/PublishSingleFile

Expected behavior

Cannot resolve Assembly or Windows Metadata file 'E:\source\App1\ClassLibrary1\bin\Release\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\ClassLibrary1.dll' App1 E:\source\App1\App1\App1.csproj

Metadata file 'E:\source\App1\ClassLibrary1\bin\Release\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\ClassLibrary1.dll' could not be found App1

Screenshots

No response

NuGet package version

Windows App SDK 1.5.5: 1.5.240627000

Packaging type

Unpackaged

Windows version

Windows 11 version 22H2 (22621, 2022 Update)

IDE

Visual Studio 2022-preview, Visual Studio 2022

Additional context

No response

[haonanttt]

could you help double confirm whether you still can repro this issue? I tried to repro using both 1.5.240627000 and 1.6.241114003, and the publish step works well and the .exe file also works well.

[haonanttt]

thanks for your confirmation. From my investigation, the problem is not only "PublishSingleFile does not working with ClassLibrary" but actually "Publish does not working with ClassLibrary". And i find the problem is the publish process will try to refer the class library assembly from a wrong path (namely, same as microsoft/WindowsAppSDK#4618, the runtimeIdentifier would be used in the path). For this issue, I can provide a work around and the fix itself may take more time.

Work around:
1.Create a Blank Project
2.Create a Blank Class Library
3.Add Class Library Reference to Main Project
4.Build
5.Manually modify the Class Library output folder:
5.1. in ...\ClassLibrary1\bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0, manually create a folder win-x64 (according to the runtime identifier you want to use), and put all other files into it. This will make all files that previously in folder bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0 now in new path bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64
5.2 in ...\ClassLibrary1\obj\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0, manually create a folder win-x64 and put all other files into it.
4.Publish UnPackaged/PublishSingleFile. Then it should be work.

Please have a try for the work around, thanks.

[haonanttt]

Note, the key problem for this issue is not in condition PublishSingleFile. But actually any publish process if we project referenced a winui class library. And a temporarily workaround is to somehow copy all the contents inside ...\ClassLibrary1\bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0\runtime-identifier into ...\ClassLibrary1\bin\Debug\net8.0-windows10.0.19041.0