I've seen this question asked a few times, here and there. I'm sure the answer is in a few other places as well as here, but I don't have the link. Anywayz the topic is how to create a file that contains the biuld log contents. This is a pretty simple question because MSBuild ships with a file logger. So all we have to do is to tell MSBuild to use it and pass it the options that we want to use.
First you'll need to open the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt and navigate to the directory that contains your project. Lets call this project, DreamcatcherUI.proj. To specify to use the file logger we will have to use the /l switch when we invoke msbuild on it. This is the logger switch, the long version of this is /logger.
The syntax for using this switch is:
/l:,[;Parameters 4 logger]
In order to use the MSBuild file logger we can use the following syntax
/l:FileLogger,Microsoft.Build.Engine;verbosity=detailed;logfile=mylog.log
So the msbuild command to build the DreamcatcherUI.proj would be:
>msbuild.exe /t:Build /l:FileLogger,Microsoft.Build.Engine;verbosity=detailed;logfile=mylog.log
The verbosity is the level of detail that you want in your log file, there are 5 settings: quiet[q]; minimal[m];normal[n];detailed[d]; and diagnostic[diag]. The name in brackets is the short name, you can use these in place of the full name if desired. The logfile parameter is the location that you want the file saved to. If not specified then a file msbuild.log will be created with the log in the current directory.
It is important to mention that the parameters section of the logger is upto the logger implementation to parse and make sense of. For the FileLogger you have 2 other parameters that you can pass in those append and encoding. If append=true then the file will be appended to and overwriten if otherwise. You can use the encoding to specify a certain encoding for the log file that is to be created.
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
First you'll need to open the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt and navigate to the directory that contains your project. Lets call this project, DreamcatcherUI.proj. To specify to use the file logger we will have to use the /l switch when we invoke msbuild on it. This is the logger switch, the long version of this is /logger.
The syntax for using this switch is:
/l:
In order to use the MSBuild file logger we can use the following syntax
/l:FileLogger,Microsoft.Build.Engine;verbosity=detailed;logfile=mylog.log
So the msbuild command to build the DreamcatcherUI.proj would be:
>msbuild.exe /t:Build /l:FileLogger,Microsoft.Build.Engine;verbosity=detailed;logfile=mylog.log
The verbosity is the level of detail that you want in your log file, there are 5 settings: quiet[q]; minimal[m];normal[n];detailed[d]; and diagnostic[diag]. The name in brackets is the short name, you can use these in place of the full name if desired. The logfile parameter is the location that you want the file saved to. If not specified then a file msbuild.log will be created with the log in the current directory.
It is important to mention that the parameters section of the logger is upto the logger implementation to parse and make sense of. For the FileLogger you have 2 other parameters that you can pass in those append and encoding. If append=true then the file will be appended to and overwriten if otherwise. You can use the encoding to specify a certain encoding for the log file that is to be created.
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
How do I log error in a variable and send it by email ?
It's not quite as straight foward as assiging the error into a variable, and emailing it. With MSBuild, to handle this scenario you will have to actually write your own logger. But it's not as hard as it may sound!
Give me a few days and I'll post a blog specifically about this topic.
Thanks,
Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi
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