Recently a chapter from my book Deploying .NET Applications: Learning MSBuild and ClickOnce has been posted. You can read the sample chapter MSBuild By Example. Here is the TOC for that chapter.

MSBuild: By Example

Introducing Well-Known Metadata

Formatting Your Output

Editing MSBuild Files with IntelliSense

Integrating MSBuild into Visual Studio

Introducing Custom Metadata

Understanding the Difference Between @ and %

Using Environment Variables in Your Project

Reusing MSBuild Project Elements

Dealing with MSBuild Errors

Summary

Thanks to the guys at Apress and C# Online for making this chapter available online for everyone to have a look at!

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi 

 

 

I've created a project on CodePlex to hold all of the MSBuild tasks/loggers and what not from my book and my MSDN article Inside MSBuild. The project home page is at Sedodream MSBuild CodePlex project. The idea is that I'll keep all of the MSBuild related material that I discuss here there as well. If you have content that you'd like to post there thats great too.
Here is the current list of what is available there:

Tasks Included

Name	Description
AddMetadata	Allows you to add metadata to an item
FindUnder	Finds and returns all directories (empty or not) under a specified path
GetDate	Returns a string representation of the date in a specified format
GetRegKey	Returns the value of a registry key
Move	Task to move a file (or set of files)
NUnitTask	Task to run NUnit test cases as a part of the build process
TempFile	Returns the path to a new temporary file

Loggers Included

Name	Description
EmailLogger	An MSBuild logger capable of emailing the resulting log
SimpleFileLogger	A simple MSBuild file based logger
XmlLogger	An MSBuild logger which creates an Xml file

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

A few days ago I received an email about an MSBuild visual editor! This was something that I was interested in doing a while ago, but never got around to doing it. This tool is called MSBuild Sidekick, and you can download it for free from http://www.attrice.info/msbuild/index.htm. I have downloaded it and played around with it. I think it’s a good tool for people who are getting started with MSBuild, but for those who use MSBuild on a regular basis I don’t think it can replace the productivity that is achieved with Intellisense. They have an interesting way of representing the build file visually, and after some time if the right extensions are added it may be a tool that I’d use over Visual Studio to edit my MSBuild files. One of the challenges of representing a build file is that you have to be aware of where your new declarations are being placed. For instance if you have two properties defined, lets say Property1 and Property2. If Property2 depends on Property1 then you have to make sure that it is declared after Property1. As far as I could tell there was no way to achieve this without viewing the source of the project file through the tool.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

In previous versions of the Visual Studio the build customizations were basically limited to a PreBuildEvent and a PostBuildEvent. Now we have MSBuild which allows for many very specific and complex build customizations. But Microsoft obvioiusly must continue to support the Pre/Post build event. It is something that already exists, many people are familiar with it, and its very simple. Let’s see how this is implemented within MSBuild. If you add a Pre or Post build event from Visual Studio, then examine yore project file you’ll find something like the following declared.

 

  <PropertyGroup>

    <PostBuildEvent>echo 'This is the post build event!'PostBuildEvent>

  PropertyGroup>

 

So these events are actually simple properties that will be executed when the time is right. What does this mean for you? Now lets talk about what’s funny about this. When MSBuild loads your project file it will load all of the properties contained in PropertyGroup elements, followed by that your items will be evaluated. What this means for the Pre/Post build event is that you are able to access properties that have been declared in PropertyGroup element before the Pre/Post build event declaration. After this evaluation is made the value for the Pre/Post build event will not change! What this equates to is that you are able to use properties such as OutDir or AssemblyName, but you’ll never be able to access properties that are created from tasks contained in other targets! If you need to access properties that have been created by other targets then you’ll have to extend your build process outside of the Pre/Post build event. This is outlined in my MSDN article Inside MSBuild in the Extending the Build Process section.

This entry was inspired by a post on the MSDN MSBuild forum.

 

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

If you look around the net you'll find a few different Xml loggers for MSBuild. When I was writing my book I decided to write my own Xml Logger for a few different reasons. The source for the Xml logger that I wrote is available at apress.com. I'm currently in the process of trying to get some shared space for me to place my tasks and loggers that I've written for everyone to have a look at. Once I get that squared away I'll make sure to write an entry about it. In the mean time let's talk about my Xml logger. What is different about my Xml logger versus some others that you may find? When I was looking around for one, I noticed that the ones that I found didn't support building solution files very well. So that was a deficiency that I wasn't willing to sacrifice with. Besides that, I noticed that none of them had an append options as most file based loggers do. So I added that to my Xml logger. I think this is a good option if you are performing a nightly ( or continuous ) build. That way you have one place to go to each time you want to see how your build progressed. However this xml file can get quite large if your build is spanning many projects.
At the bottom of this blog you can download the dll for this logger (Contained in a zip file). The source will be made available soon. There are 4 logger arguments:
   

Name	Description
Append	True/false If true then if a log file exists then it will be append to, otherwise any existing log file will be replaced.
Logfile	Name of the log file to write to
Showsummary	True/false if true then a summary will be contained in the xml file for errors and warnings.
Verbosity	The verbosity level of the logger. Same as msbuild.exe values see MSBuild Command Line Reference

   Here is some sample output:

<MSBuild>

  <Build Started="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" Verbosity="Detailed"

Finished="6/9/2006 1:09:56 AM" Succeeded="False">

    <Message>Build started.Message>

    <Project Name="C:\Data\Dreamcatcher_NET\Dreamcatcher\Dreamcatcher.sln"

Message="Project "Dreamcatcher.sln" (Rebuild target(s)):" \

Started="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" Finished="6/9/2006 1:09:56 AM">

      <Target Started="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" Name="ValidateSolutionConfiguration"

Message="Target "ValidateSolutionConfiguration" in project "Dreamcatcher.sln"" Finished="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" Succeeded="True">

        <Task Started="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" Name="Message" Finished="6/9/2006 1:09:51 AM" />

      Target>
…

<MSBuild>

 

Here is what the summary section looks like:

    <Warnings>

      <Warning Code="CS0162" Subcategory="">

        <Message>Controls\DreamView.cs(450,6): warning CS0162: Unreachable code detectedMessage>

      Warning>

    Warnings>

    <Errors>

      <Error File="Controls\DreamView.cs" Code="CS1026" Subcategory="">

        <Message>Controls\DreamView.cs(459,44): error CS1026: ) expectedMessage>

        <Location Line="459" ColumnNumber="44" />

      Error>

      <Error File="Controls\DreamView.cs" Code="CS1002" Subcategory="">

        <Message>Controls\DreamView.cs(459,45): error CS1002: ; expectedMessage>

        <Location Line="459" ColumnNumber="45" />

      Error>

      <Error File="Controls\DreamView.cs" Code="CS1525" Subcategory="">

        <Message>Controls\DreamView.cs(459,45): error CS1525: Invalid expression term ')'Message>

        <Location Line="459" ColumnNumber="45" />

      Error>

      <Error File="Controls\DreamView.cs" Code="CS1002" Subcategory="">

        <Message>Controls\DreamView.cs(459,46): error CS1002: ; expectedMessage>

        <Location Line="459" ColumnNumber="46" />

      Error>

    Errors>

The syntax to use this logger at the command prompt is:

msbuild.exe /l:XmlLogger,PATH_TO_ASSEMBLY\Sedodream.MSBuild.Loggers.dll;logfile=build.xml;verbosity=detailed;append=true;showsummary=true

There is no required parameters the defaults are:

• Logfile=build.log.xml
• Verbosity=normal
• Append=false
• Showsummary=false

Sedodream.MSBuild.Loggers.zip (binaries 9.77 KB)

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi