I’m sure someone has already blogged on this, but as a reminder to myself and others, in Visual Studio 2008 it is not as straightforward to provide a relative path for a shared .snk file (for instance when signing multiple BizTalk projects with the same key file).
In the past, you could simply type in the path to the snk file in the project properties. Now this field is a dropdown and selecting browse will only let you find and copy the file to the root of the project.
To get around this, you can edit the project file (in the case of BizTalk, the .btproj). The following is an example where the .snk is both included as a shortcut in the project (not a copy) and uses the .snk for signing:
(Note: this project is the updated project schema for BizTalk 2009, so don't try to use this approach for BTS2006+VS2005)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
<Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">AnyCPU</Platform>
<ProductVersion>9.0.30729</ProductVersion>
<SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>
<ProjectGuid>{6092B853-D9B4-4C5E-B480-746703C74E80}</ProjectGuid>
<ProjectTypeGuids>{EF7E3281-CD33-11D4-8326-00C04FA0CE8D};{FAE04EC0-301F-11D3-BF4B-00C04F79EFBC}</ProjectTypeGuids>
<OutputType>library</OutputType>
<GenericProcessing>true</GenericProcessing>
<RootNamespace>Test.Orchestrations</RootNamespace>
<AssemblyName>Test.Orchestrations</AssemblyName>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v3.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<BpelCompliance>True</BpelCompliance>
<SignAssembly>true</SignAssembly>
<AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>..\Test.snk</AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|AnyCPU' ">
<DebugSymbols>true</DebugSymbols>
<DebugType>full</DebugType>
<Optimize>false</Optimize>
<OutputPath>bin\Debug\</OutputPath>
<DefineConstants>DEBUG;TRACE</DefineConstants>
<ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
<WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">
<DebugType>pdbonly</DebugType>
<Optimize>true</Optimize>
<OutputPath>bin\Release\</OutputPath>
<DefineConstants>TRACE</DefineConstants>
<ErrorReport>prompt</ErrorReport>
<WarningLevel>4</WarningLevel>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="System">
<Name>System</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Xml">
<Name>System.XML</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System.Configuration">
<Name>System.Configuration</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="Microsoft.BizTalk.Pipeline">
<SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines">
<Name>Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas">
<Name>Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="Microsoft.BizTalk.TestTools">
<Name>Microsoft.BizTalk.TestTools</Name>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes">
<Name>Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes</Name>
</Reference>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs" />
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<None Include="..\Test.snk" />
</ItemGroup>
<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\BizTalk\BizTalkC.targets" />
</Project>
Just save the file and VS will reload the project showing “..\Test.snk” as the location of the strong name key file.
