Hi,
I've project A configured as Windows application (exe). Unit test project B is using reference for project A. In .NET Core Windows application project are build as two file .dll and .exe. Output folder of test project B contains these two files, but workspace folder used by NCrunch contains only .dll file from A project.
My unit tests based on existence of this .exe file, so all test are "red". In Visual Studio Tests Explorer all test are "green", only NCrunch has problem.
Is there any possibility to configure NCrunch to copy both files, exe and dll to the workspace folder. I want to avoid passing file path to the exe file in "additional files to include".

Hi,
this .exe file is used to execute some action, which result is checked by unit test assertions. I could add this exe file as a resource, but if I change build configuration, the exe file won't change and won't be able to use corresponding dll file.

In my opinion, instead of necessity to write additional code to copy .exe file or linking it as resource, NCrunch should know that if the project is configured as windows application (console or desktop), there are two files .exe and .dll and these two files should be copied to the NCrunch working directory.

I appreciate you help. It would be great if NCrunch would have such a functionality (maybe not turned of by default, it could be configurable).

I've looked into this issue in more detail, and I feel it's worth adding some notes here for anyone impacted by it. My initial understanding of this problem was wrong.

The generation of the .EXE stub for application based projects in newer versions of .NET is handled by a chain of build steps that are dependent on the MSBuild UseAppHost property. By default, this property is enabled for your normal build, which means that MSBuild will generate and include files that are needed to run your application directly from the bin\debug directory.

NCrunch specifically disables this property (UseAppHost=false) because the build steps do much more than just generate the stub .EXE file, such as adding an implicit dependency on Microsoft.NETCore.App.Host.*, which cannot be easily identified up front when loading the project and thus may not be present on any grid nodes being used to execute the tests. Normally under NCrunch, the app host complexity isn't needed because we build the test environment without it, so it's basically just slowing down the build and potentially causing compatibility issues with grid processing.

However, it's accepted that this can cause problems for people that have tests relying on the .EXE files. So it's possible to force NCrunch to leave the setting enabled so that the files can be generated. To do this, just add a custom build property to the project being built, setting UseAppHost=true. This will override NCrunch's behaviour and you'll get your .EXE. The Copy Referenced Assemblies To Workspace setting will also consider it and appropriately copy it when needed.

I cannot warrant you won't experience downstream problems by enabling this behaviour under NCrunch though .. we do disable it for a reason.