Add the property controlling publishing the symbols of reference projects

[GangWang01]

Fix dotnet/msbuild#12044

Add the property PublishReferenceSymbols to control whether the .pdb file of the referenced project is published to the publish folder.

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR introduces a new PublishReferencesSymbols property to control publishing of referenced project PDB files, along with default behavior and tests.

• Added PublishReferencesSymbols property with a default value in MSBuild’s BeforeCommon targets.
• Updated publish logic to conditionally include .pdb files based on the new property.
• Introduced a theory test to verify symbol publishing when the property is explicitly set.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
test/Microsoft.NET.Publish.Tests/GivenThatWeWantToPublishAProjectWithDependencies.cs	Added a theory test for PublishReferencesSymbols=true/false scenarios.
src/Tasks/Microsoft.NET.Build.Tasks/targets/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.BeforeCommon.targets	Defined <PublishReferencesSymbols> property with a default of true.
src/Tasks/Microsoft.NET.Build.Tasks/targets/Microsoft.NET.Publish.targets	Modified the copy-local asset condition to include .pdb when enabled.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

test/Microsoft.NET.Publish.Tests/GivenThatWeWantToPublishAProjectWithDependencies.cs:280

• Consider adding a test case for the default behavior (when PublishReferencesSymbols isn't specified) to ensure it truly defaults to true and PDB files are published by default.

        [Theory]

[Copilot]

[nitpick] This multi-line Condition is quite verbose and can be hard to maintain; consider breaking it into separate ItemGroups or using intermediate properties to clarify each inclusion rule.

Suggested change

	Condition="(('$(PublishReferencesDocumentationFiles)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.xml')
	or ('$(PublishReferencesSymbols)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.pdb')
	or ('%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.xml' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.pdb'))
	and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Private)' != 'false'">
	<DestinationSubPath>%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.DestinationSubDirectory)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Filename)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)</DestinationSubPath>
	</_ResolvedCopyLocalPublishAssets>
	Condition="('$(PublishReferencesDocumentationFiles)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.xml') or
	('$(PublishReferencesSymbols)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.pdb') or
	('%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.xml' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.pdb')">
	</_ResolvedCopyLocalPublishAssets>
	<PropertyGroup>
	<IsDocumentationFile Condition="'$(PublishReferencesDocumentationFiles)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.xml'">true</IsDocumentationFile>
	<IsSymbolFile Condition="'$(PublishReferencesSymbols)' == 'true' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' == '.pdb'">true</IsSymbolFile>
	<IsOtherFile Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.xml' and '%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)' != '.pdb'">true</IsOtherFile>
	<IsPrivateFile Condition="'%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Private)' != 'false'">true</IsPrivateFile>
	</PropertyGroup>
	<ItemGroup>
	<_ResolvedCopyLocalPublishAssets Include="@(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths)"
	Exclude="@(_ResolvedCopyLocalBuildAssets);@(RuntimePackAsset)"
	Condition="('$(IsDocumentationFile)' == 'true' or
	'$(IsSymbolFile)' == 'true' or
	'$(IsOtherFile)' == 'true') and
	'$(IsPrivateFile)' == 'true'">
	<DestinationSubPath>%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.DestinationSubDirectory)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Filename)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)</DestinationSubPath>
	</_ResolvedCopyLocalPublishAssets>
	</ItemGroup>
	<DestinationSubPath>%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.DestinationSubDirectory)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Filename)%(ReferenceCopyLocalPaths.Extension)</DestinationSubPath>
	</_ResolvedCopyLocalPublishAssets>

[GangWang01]

@rainersigwald can you please take a look?

[YuliiaKovalova]

@baronfel could you please check this PR?

[baronfel]

This name seems fine to me given the other prior art.

[baronfel]

I added the document for new feature label because we'd need to ensure we add docs for this flag to dotnet/docs.

[GangWang01]

I added the document for new feature label because we'd need to ensure we add docs for this flag to dotnet/docs.

Please review the doc pr dotnet/docs#50255.