VSCode appends taskName to msbuild automatically - msbuild

Question

In Visual Studio Code (VSCode) I've create a task to build my c++ project. The build-process is based on Visual-Studio 12.0 projects files create by CMake. It provides configurations for Release/Debug/... modes and I want to create for each configuration a separate task.
Problem: VSCode appends the taskName to msbuild automatically. My tasks.json file looks like:
{
"version": "0.1.0",
"command": "msbuild",
"args": ["${cwd}/build/PROJECTNAME.sln",
"/property:GenerateFullPaths=true"],
"taskSelector": "/t:",
"tasks": [
{
"taskName": "build release",
"args": ["/p:Configuration=Release"],
"problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
},
{
"taskName": "build debug",
"args": ["/p:Configuration=Debug"],
"problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
}]
}
The argument /t:${taskName} seems to be appended automatically to msbuild. If I add the parameter /t:Build in the args variable of a task manually, It gives me the error, that two targets are specified in msbuild. Removing the taskSelector variable does not help. The only way I get it running, is to set all taskName variables to Build, but then I can not distiguish between different tasks in the tasks-selector.
Any ideas how to solve this?
PS: is there a reference of possible parameters for the tasks.json file, except those provided in the example file and on the official documentation site?

Answer 1

We have a work item to support suppressTaskName on the task description. If this does get implemented would it solve your problem.

Answer 2

After playing around with msbuild command-line arguments I've figured out a workaround. It is not nice and only works in some cases, but for me it is fine. Hopefully in later versions of VSCode a better solution can be implemented.
The idea: Add a dummy argument to msbuild, that has no meaningful effect. I've tried two version: (1) add the preprocess command-line switch, that creates a file with content that you could ignore, i.e. "taskSelect": "/pp:"; (2) add a dummy property to msbuild that accepts any argument, like /p:DefineConstants=....
The final tasks.json file looks like:
{
"version": "0.1.0",
"command": "msbuild",
"args": ["${cwd}/build/PROJECTNAME.sln",
"/property:GenerateFullPaths=true"],
// a dummy taskSelector to overcome a restriction in msbuild
// (1) "taskSelector": "/pp:",
// (2) ...
"taskSelector": "/p:DefineConstants=taskName_",
"tasks": [
{
"taskName": "build_release",
"args": ["/t:Build", "/p:Configuration=Release"],
"problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
},
{
"taskName": "build_debug",
"args": ["/t:Build", "/p:Configuration=Debug"],
"problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
}
]}
You can only use taskName without spaces, but this is ok, since one can now distinguish between different tasks.
Maybe in other build-systems like grunt there is a similar dummy-parameter that can be set to taskName without changing the build-process.
I'm open to better solutions to this problem.