Why the files which are added as link in project are not deployed on SharePoint 2010

Question

I have two projects in my VS solution, a project named "B" is a SharePoint 2010 project which has a mapped SharePoint "Layouts\js" folder and some other project "A".

In project "B" I put various files in the "Layouts\js" folder which are deployed when I hit deploy from VS2010. But if I add existing item from project "A" "someFile.js" with the option "Add As Link" to "Layouts\js" in project "B", the linked item is not deployed when I hit deploy from VS2010.

Why does this not work?

I want to be able to have only one copy of "someFile.js" across both projects, and I want "someFile.js" to be deployed in "Layouts\js" when I hit Deploy from VS2010.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

The link won't be handled by the package builder.

You can, however, edit manually the spdata file to "link" the files.

For example, I use this technique to link resources files. I have to deploy resx both in \14\resources and \app_globalresources. To avoid duplicating the file, I change the spdata file like this :

<ProjectItem 
    Type="Microsoft.VisualStudio.SharePoint.GenericElement" 
    DefaultFile="Elements.xml" 
    SupportedTrustLevels="All" 
    SupportedDeploymentScopes="Web, Site, WebApplication, Farm, Package"         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2010/SharePointTools/SharePointProjectItemModel">
  <Files>
    <ProjectItemFile Source="Elements.xml" Target="App_GlobalResources\" Type="ElementManifest" />
    <ProjectItemFile Source="..\Resources\my.resx"
                     Type="AppGlobalResource"/>
    <ProjectItemFile Source="..\Resources\my.fr-FR.resx"
                     Type="AppGlobalResource"/>
  </Files>
</ProjectItem>

When the package will be build, the files will be taken from the relative path.

More on this in this article.