Tip: Specifying Key file path for BizTalk projects

As we know, key file needs to be specified for any BizTalk project in order for assembly to have strong name before GAC/deploy the same. We could specify this key file either through project properties or in AssemblyInfo.cs file. We can conveniently specify the path to key file if we choose the later. But if we specify the path to key file using Project Properties window, I observed that a copy of key file is being created in respective project folder and same is being referenced. But there may be times where we might want to specify key file from a different location to avoid multiple copies of key file. Here are couple of such scenarios,

1. When we like to maintain key file at some common location(like at root level) and share the same across multiple BizTalk projects/solutions

2. When we migrate BizTalk solutions from previous versions, they might contain the path to key file. If we need to change this through browse option, we get local copy of key file and lose the ability to choose different location.

Here is a manual work around to specify key file path at BizTalk project level,

Open BizTalk project in some text editor (like Notepad), and we can observe the following section in that,

For BizTalk Server 2010 project:
< PropertyGroup >
<SignAssembly > true/false</SignAssembly>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup>
<AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile><path to key file here></AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>
</PropertyGroup>

For BizTalk Server 2009 project:

<PropertyGroup >
<AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile><path to key file here></AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile>
<SignAssembly > true/false</SignAssembly>
</PropertyGroup>

Specify key file path in the AssemblyOriginatorKeyFile node and save the file. Now we can see the same path in Properties window as well.