Subj.
\"Automatically\" is essential here. References from GAC must not be copied.
I\'ve seen e.g. VS2008.NET: Getting a referenced project’s dependencies to
For C++ projects, i.e. *.vcxproj set the property.
for C# projects, i.e. *.csproj set the property.
Make sure nothing overwrites those properties. In all my years doing builds for major, large products, I've never had to do anything different. If you have to do any other clever hack, you are surely doing something wrong.