Including links to external resources in Visual Studio 2010 Web project

I have a ASP.NET project which relies upon the FreeImage .NET wrapper. This is loaded using a reference to a external directory. The wrapper relies upon the FreeImage.dll being present to work (clearly).

How do I get Visual Studio to include a reference to the FreeImage dll. It's not a .NET assembl开发者_JS百科y, i think it was built in something else (so I can't add it as a reference).

I don't really want to have a copy for this project as these files reside in a different SVN repository

Add a pre-build macro/script to copy the file across each time you build. There's no way to add a symbolic link into a visstudio afaik.

I am assuming the .dll was built using a .NET supported language like C#.

You can just right click over the site and select 'Add Reference'.

Browse to the .dll you are looking for and then click 'Ok' to add it.

It should add a .refresh file to your site and the dll. The .refresh file is what is checked into your source control letting the site know the relative location of the .dll to the site.