I want to include property names inside the target name.
<PropertyGroup>
<Property1>Example</Property1>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="$(Property1)">
But i got an error: error MSB5016: The
name "$(Property1)" contains an invalid character "$".
Does the name has to be hard-coded?
Related
I have an MSBuild project target which needs to create a zip file from a folder (lets call it FolderA) of files, some of which files need to be excluded and not added to the zip file, so the target needs to copy the files (except for the excluded files) from FolderA to a temporary folder, then call the target ZipDirectory target on the temp folder.
I'm creating the temp folder by creating an itemgroup
<ItemGroup>
<TempStagingFolder Include="$([System.IO.Path]::Combine([System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath(), [System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName()))" />
</ItemGroup>
but this never evaluates to a folder name, just the static method calls on System.IO.Path
How can I create a temp random folder name in MSBuild to pass to the ZipDirectory target?
Change your code to
<ItemGroup>
<TempStagingFolder Include="$([System.IO.Path]::Combine($([System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath()), $([System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName())))" />
</ItemGroup>
Each call static property method call needs to be enclosed in $().
For troubleshooting, maintenance, and for overriding you may find it useful to build up the folder path and name from properties, e.g.:
<PropertyGroup>
<TempStagingPath Condition="'$(TempStagingPath)' == ''">$([System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath())</TempStagingPath>
<TempStagingFolderName Condition="'$(TempStagingFolderName)' == ''">$([System.IO.Path]::GetRandomFileName())</TempStagingFolderName>
<TempStagingFolder Condition="'$(TempStagingFolder)' == ''">$([System.IO.Path]::Combine($(TempStagingPath), $(TempStagingFolderName)))</TempStagingFolder>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<TempStagingFolder Include="$(TempStagingFolder)" />
</ItemGroup>
Property names and Item names do not collide. $(TempStagingFolder) and #(TempStagingFolder) are different 'objects'.
By having separate properties, if there is an issue you can check the specific property. Testing that the property is not already set, allows for overriding the property with a different value.
I have a path for compilation :
C:\FolderA\Folder16-9\ForderC\FolderD
I want to extract the name of the second folder "Folder16-9" to put in a variable and use it after for compilation destination path.
How I can extract this folder name? is it possible with MSBuild scripting?
The following example code
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<Target Name="Test">
<PropertyGroup>
<ExamplePath>C:\FolderA\Folder16-9\ForderC\FolderD</ExamplePath>
<SecondPart>$(ExamplePath.Split('\')[2])</SecondPart>
</PropertyGroup>
<Message Text="$(ExamplePath)" />
<Message Text="$(SecondPart)" />
</Target>
</Project>
will output
C:\FolderA\Folder16-9\ForderC\FolderD
Folder16-9
String methods can be used on properties. The example code is splitting the string on '/' and from the resulting array is using the value of index 2.
In the example, I defined the test value as a property. If you need to work with Item metadata, e.g. %(FullPath), note that property functions can't be used on metadata and the metadata will need to pulled out into a property.
I'm having problem in accessing a PropertyGroup which is declared inside a target.
Message inside Target is publishing the version number correctly. When i try to publish the VersionNumber and VersionInfo ,I’m able to see only correct value for VersionInfo as true but VersionNumber is displayed as empty string.I want the VersionNumber value also published here
Please help !
Below is my code file :
<PropertyGroup >
<FileLocation>C:\Dev\version.txt</FileLocation>
<VersionInfo>false</VersionInfo>
<VersionInfo Condition="Exists('C:\Dev\version.txt')">true</VersionInfo>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="ReadFromFile">
<ReadLinesFromFile File="$(FileLocation)" >
<Output PropertyName="VersionNumber"
TaskParameter="Lines"/>
</ReadLinesFromFile>
<Message Text="Inside Target (Version Number) : $(VersionNumber)"/>
</Target>
<ItemDefinitionGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>
<Command>
echo VersionNumber: $(VersionNumber)
echo VersionInfo: $(VersionInfo)
</Command>
</PreBuildEvent>
</ItemDefinitionGroup>
I found a solution for my problem.Even i could remove the entire Target-ReadfromFile and could read the text file content in property group itself.I used property function - System.IO.File::ReadAllText to achieve my functionality.
It turned out to be a simple solution
More details about property functions can be found here
My code looks like below now :
<PropertyGroup >
<FileLocation>C:\Dev\version.txt</FileLocation>
<VersionInfo>false</VersionInfo>
<VersionInfo Condition="Exists('C:\Dev\version.txt')">true</VersionInfo>
<VersionDetails>$([System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($(FileLocation)))</VersionDetails>
</PropertyGroup>
Now i can access VersionDetails property anywhere in the project
We are running MSBuild from CruiseControl.net.
We have one branch that, when built on the build server via CC, fails with the following error:
<target name="UpdateAssemblyInfo" startTime="11/13/2012 18:48:35" elapsedTime="00:00:01" elapsedSeconds="1" success="false">
<error code="MSB4018" file="C:\Continuous Integration Projects\Project\Release\Build\Master.build" line="88" column="5" timeStamp="11/13/2012 18:48:36"><![CDATA[The "CreateItem" task failed unexpectedly.System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters. at System.IO.PathHelper.GetFullPathName()
The error goes on for many more lines...
The task is defined in master.build:
<Target Name="UpdateAssemblyInfo">
<CreateItem Include="$(SourcePath)\**\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs">
<Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="UpdateAssemblyInfoFiles"/>
</CreateItem>
<Attrib Files="#(UpdateAssemblyInfoFiles)" Normal="true" />
<AssemblyInfo AssemblyInfoFiles="#(UpdateAssemblyInfoFiles)" AssemblyVersion="$(CCNetLabel)" AssemblyFileVersion="$(CCNetLabel)"/>
</Target>
How can we figure out which AssemblyInfo.cs is causing the problem?
Is there some way to add diagnostic output to the master.build file?
Thanks for any insight...
Set the verbosity level of MSBuild to diag and check the output. Assuming you are using CCNET's <msbuild> task this should be it:
<msbuild>
<!-- ... -->
<buildArgs>/v:diag</buildArgs>
</msbuild>
The exception does state that the path or file name exceeds the length constraints.
System.IO.PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
As AssemblyInfo.cs is less than 260 characters in length we can deduce that it doesn't like the path.
Are you able to check to see if the path part is 248 characters or more?
Below is a portion of a MSBuild file that I'm working on:
<ItemGroup>
<Tests Include="$(SolutionDir)\**\bin\$(TestPlatform)\$(Configuration)\*.Tests.dll" />
</ItemGroup>
<PropertyGroup>
<TestProperties>/testcontainer:%(Tests.FullPath)</TestProperties>
</PropertyGroup>
I want to have a property that holds a command line switch. However, when I try to use $(TestProperties) in an Exec Command string, %(Tests.FullPath) is never resolved to the absolute path of the Tests item. Instead, it's always processed literally, as "%(Tests.FullPath)".
Am I doing something wrong or is this a standard MSBuild behavior? If the latter, is there a way for me to workaround this?
Thanks
P.S. - I realize I probably don't need to access the FullPath property since my Include value is an absolute path. However, I'd still like to understand the issue, along with how to handle it.
You have a syntax error. Item lists are referenced via the # character and item meta data is referenced via %. Reference the MSBuild Special Character Reference for details. To access the well known item metadata, you need to apply a transform inside the Property itself.
<ItemGroup>
<Tests Include="MyFile.txt" />
</ItemGroup>
<PropertyGroup>
<TestProperties>/testcontainer:#(Tests->'%(FullPath)')</TestProperties>
</PropertyGroup>
You can find more help here