Best practices for developing and deploying an application with plugins using MEF?

Question

My application consists of a simple WinForms host, and several dll's that implement different functionality. I'm using MEF to load those plugins. In order for the host app to find the plugins, the dll's have to be copied to the app's directory.

Right now, during development, I just add a reference to each project. This way the dlls are automatically copied to the app directory, and are also included in the deployment project.

I want to change that, so the host doesn't know about the plugins. Instead, I want to include the plugin projects in my deployment project, so they are installed in the right directory. Here's my problem: What's the correct way to still be able to debug the app (which is useless without the plugins)? Copy each plugin dll in the post build event...?

Answer 1

An answer two years later. Yes copy the plugins via a post build event.