Issue with Publishing Necessary Files for third party SDK in Azure Function App

Question

Hi Teams,

We are working with an Azure Function app where we've integrated the Perfectly Clear SDK, written in .NET with some components in C++ (DLLs) and neural network files with a .pnn extension. The SDK requires that all its DLLs and .pnn files reside in the bin folder of the Azure Function app.

Everything works as expected on our local environment, but when publishing the function app from Visual Studio, only the DLLs are copied to the bin folder, and the .pnn files are excluded. We need all the DLLs and .pnn files to be present in the bin folder for the SDK to function correctly.

We've attempted the following approaches to resolve this:

1. Publishing from Visual Studio, which builds and uploads a zip file.
2. Manually copying the necessary files via FTP after connecting to the Function app.

Despite these efforts, the .pnn files are still not getting copied to the bin folder.

Could you provide guidance on how to ensure the .pnn files are included in the bin folder when publishing to Azure?

Thank you

Asif

Answer 1

Hello Asif !

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Learn.

You’need to update your .csproj file to explicitly include these files with correct build and publish instructions.

Open your the .csproj file and add an ItemGroup like this:

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="YourFolder\*.pnn">
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    <CopyToPublishDirectory>Always</CopyToPublishDirectory>
  </Content>
</ItemGroup>

If the .pnn files are in the project root folder, simplify like:

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="*.pnn">
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>Always</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    <CopyToPublishDirectory>Always</CopyToPublishDirectory>
  </Content>
</ItemGroup>

Don't forget to rebuild your solution in Visual Studio and re-publish your Function App.