Is there a way in Visual Stuio's compilation settings to combine other referenced DLLs into the built assembly?

Question

I have an EXE that I want to distribute, but I don't want to ship all the associated DLLs with it (sort of).

Currently I package them all together using .NET Reactor.

I tried ILMerge a while back to achieve the same, but when I tried it I ran into trouble - .NET Reactor has never, ever failed me.

Is there a way to achieve this in the compilation settings in Visual Studio?

Would it mean wrapping up a call to ILMerge in the build actions? If so, can anyone give me some pointers to the right way to set this up? I am willing to give ILMerge a second chance, it's been two years..!

Answer 1

There are many, many, many places on the web the explain how to use ILMerge with MSBuild. It not a compilation setting but its close enough.