Sharing Resources Between Asp.Net projects

If you need to share resources such as images and javascript files between different Asp.Net projects, an easy way to do it is to:

• Move the assets in a common location.

• Right click on project and choose “Add Existing Item”

• Navigate to shared resources and click on “Add As Link”

• Open your project file in a text editor and update the “AfterBuild” Target.

    <Target Name="AfterBuild">
        <!-- Delete old copies of linked files -->
        <Delete Condition=" '%(Content.Link)' != '' AND Exists('$(WebProjectOutputDir)\%(Content.Link)') " Files="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\%(Content.Link)" />
        <!-- Copy linked files -->
        <Copy Condition=" '%(Content.Link)' != '' " SourceFiles="%(Content.Identity)" DestinationFiles="$(WebProjectOutputDir)\%(Content.Link)" />
    </Target>

This makes sure that the linked content is copied while maintaining the folder structure.