Hide WinRT.Host runtime assets in Solution Explorer - #2500
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The WinRT.Host.dll, WinRT.Host.dll.mui and WinRT.Host.Shim.dll items are build/runtime assets copied to the output directory, not files users are meant to interact with. Mark them with Visible=false so they no longer show up as project items in Solution Explorer, while still being copied to the output directory as before. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: 0b96f4f1-0434-43cd-b44a-dc4a132fb863
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Sergio0694
enabled auto-merge (squash)
July 29, 2026 20:27
manodasanW
approved these changes
Jul 30, 2026
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Summary
Mark the
WinRT.Host.dll,WinRT.Host.dll.muiandWinRT.Host.Shim.dllitems added by the authoring targets withVisible=false, so they no longer show up as project items in Solution Explorer. Fixes #2499.Motivation
When a project authors a Windows Runtime component,
Microsoft.Windows.CsWinRT.Authoring.targetsadds threeNoneitems in an evaluation-timeItemGroupso the hosting assets get copied to the output directory. Because these items are created at evaluation time (as opposed to theContentitems in the packaging target, which are only created while the target runs), Visual Studio surfaces them as regular project items in Solution Explorer.These are purely build/runtime assets that come out of the CsWinRT NuGet package. Users are never meant to interact with them from Solution Explorer, and having them listed there is just noise (they also look out of place, since they're the only items in the project that live outside the project directory).
Changes
nuget/Microsoft.Windows.CsWinRT.Authoring.targets: add<Visible>false</Visible>metadata to the three hosting assetNoneitems, and update the surrounding comment to explain why.Note that
Visibleonly affects how the items are displayed by the IDE, so the assets are still copied to the output directory exactly as before. This was verified by evaluating the targets file (all three items are still produced, withCopyToOutputDirectory=PreserveNewestintact) and by building a small project with equivalent items, which still copies both files to the output directory.