I also have this problem. I have tried fiddling with paket.restore.targets, but I cannot make it work. I also cannot find any good documentation on what exactly the options for ExcludeAssets and PrivateAssets mean, and which of those that replaces the old copy local/private flag.

Seems like the <ExcludeAssets>runtime</ExcludeAssets> tag is not inserted into the obj/{project.file}.paket.props file even though the obj/{project.file}.%(Identity).paket.resolved says exclude in for the NuGets marked with copy_local.

The problem I have is using VS2017. It breaks this when it opens the project and generates all the obj folder contents.

The difference between setting copy_local: false in paket.dependencies and paket.references you can see in the generated {projectfilename}.paket.net462.resolved file in the obj folder:

• set copy_local: false in paket.dependencies:
  FSharp.Core,4.5.2,Transitive,Main,exclude
  Suave,2.4.3,Direct,Main,exclude

• set copy_local: false in paket.references:
  FSharp.Core,4.5.2,Transitive,Main,false
  Suave,2.4.3,Direct,Main,false

I would think that both should end up with exclude as the last element.

Seems like it's hard-coded to be copy_local: true in the references files (the 4th argument):

Although it does parse the references file first with copy_local settings and all. So not sure when this is called yet. Have to read more of the code first.

It seems that it's broken again for .NET Core 3 Preview.
Here's an example folders. If you change TargetFramework to netcoreapp2.0 in the paket folder then NLog.dll won't be copied to bin. For netcoreapp3.0 it's copied. For standard folder it's not copied either way.

copy_local.zip

You mean core 3 breaks it? /cc @cartermp

It's hard for me to tell what's the reason for it no to work anymore, but with preview 4 installed targeting to netcoreapp3.0 ignores copy_local option. While targeting netcoreapp2.0 don't.