Cannot configure content handling (build action) with sdk projects

[OregonGhost]

Description

I need to create a nupkg with Paket, and am using a paket.template file for this. The source project is using Paket. I need to build some content files (actually, several .exe and .dll files) into the package, and when the package is being installed in an SDK-style project, the files need to be copied to output directory. Currently, however, they are added as compile, without any way to modify this.

Repro steps

1. Create a paket.template file with the following contents:

type file
id MyPackage
version $VERSION$

files
  Some.exe ==> contentFiles/any/any/Some

(not sure if additional attributes are needed, but this is a minimalistic example)

2. Build the package with Paket.
3. Install the package into an SDK-style project using vanilla NuGet.

Expected behavior

The executables are added to the project as content. This will work fine when manually creating a NuSpec file as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2013/05/nuspec.xsd">
  <metadata>
    <id>MyPackage</id>
    ... snip ...
    <contentFiles>
      <files include="any\any\Some\*" buildAction="Content" copyToOutput="true" />
    </contentFiles>
  </metadata>
  <files>
    <file src="Some.exe" target="contentFiles\any\any\Some"/>
  </files>
</package>

Note: When building the package with NuGet, the files element is removed, but the metadata/contentFiles element stays there.

Actual behavior

The executables are added to the project as compile, resulting in a compiler error.

Known workarounds

It seems there is no way to add the metadata/contentFiles attribute by modifying the paket.template file, or at least there is nothing in the documentation. There seems to be no way to change the target behaviour. The only way I found is to use NuGet.exe rather than Paket to generate the package, which would be annoying, since the source project is Paket-only, or to modify the .nuspec file in the generated package, which would also be annoying.

I found several issues related to this, but none of them seem to actually provide any means to modify the build action of content files, one of them was #3269. But my problem is not about installing or not installing content files, and not about automatically determining the build action: It is about how to specify the build action in the paket.template file or, more precisely, how to create the mentioned contentFiles element in the resulting .nuspec.

[luithefirst]

There still does not seem to be a mechanism for this. Another workaround if you want to use paket is to add a .targets files that include the content files in the project where the package is installed.

The package.template for this would look like:

type file
id MyLib
authors Me
description
    MyLib
files
    AdditionalFiles\**\* ==> SomeFolder
    MyLib.targets ==> build

And here is an example of how my MyLib.targets file looks:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <ItemGroup>
    <None Include="$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)..\SomeFolder\myFile.foo" Visible="false">
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </None>
    .....
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Note: "Visible=false" hides the files from the solution explorer in the installed projects. I also intentionally gave the folder containing my additional files a custom name "SomeFolder" to make sure that in case there are special rules for "contentFiles" nothing unintended happens.