How do I exclude files/folders from a .NET Core/Standard project?

Question

In .NET Core and .NET Standard projects, if you put files and folders within the project directory, they are automatically picked up by Visual Studio; essentially they are p

Answer 1

There are also a few things you can do in the csproj files to make sure the files aren't picked up:

1) Make sure none of the globbing patterns that look for "project items" pick up the files:

  $(DefaultItemExcludes);your_nonproj.file;a\**\*.pattern

2) Remove items explicitly:

Note that, on large directories (number of files), using DefaultItemExcludes with the folder\** pattern is a lot faster since msbuild will skip walking the directory entirely. Using a remove for this will still let msbuild spend quite some time discovering files.