{COPY} isn't working for me and neither is {COPYFILE} or {COPYDIR}

[AidenJWright]

I've been following along with this tutorial series and because it is a few years old, the {COPY} command has been deprecated in the intervening time.
The original command in the video:

postbuildcommands
{
    ("{COPY} %{cfg.buildtarget.relpath} ../bin/" .. outputdir .. "/Sandbox")
}

Switching {COPY} to {COPYDIR} or {COPYFILE} has been uneventful and I'm unsure what about this command is causing me to get the error Error: C:/dev/Hazel/premake5.lua:46: attempt to concatenate a nil value (global 'outputdir').

I am currently on VS2022

The suggestions in the video comments and my googling around trying to find similar struggles have been uneventful. This is my first time using Lua so please go easy on me 😅

[fjjjjjf]

I have the same problem and after I change {COPY} into {COPYDIR} ,"/Sandbox" cannot find "Hazel.dll", Who can give me some suggestions or show me your "premake5.lua",Thanks

[Jarod42]

In my testing repo, I got project pre-postbuild with copy/move.

Error: C:/dev/Hazel/premake5.lua:46: attempt to concatenate a nil value (global 'outputdir')

You forgot to set value to outputdir, or maybe you want "%{prj.targetdir}" instead

[Elscol-Loro]

I am following the same tutorial and I found that in the example given in the tutorial that the lines below do not work.

targetdir = ("bin/" .. outputdir .. "/%{prj.name}")
objdir = ("bin-int/" .. outputdir .. "/%{prj.name}")

but these do:

targetdir ("bin/" .. outputdir .. "/%{prj.name}")
objdir ("bin-int/" .. outputdir .. "/%{prj.name}")

I am still having a problem getting the DLL to copy properly, but the nil value went away.

[Jarod42]

targetdir = ("bin/" .. outputdir .. "/%{prj.name}")

is indeed wrong. It overwrites the Premake function targetdir by a string...

To copy dll, postbuildcommands is one option, or with recent premake,

files { "*.dll" }
filter "files:*.dll"
  buildaction "Copy"
filter {}