I have a msbuild target and it has a Import tag like this:
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Company\Company.LifeCycle.targets" />
In contents of Company.LifeCycle.targets file, how can I get programatically the current directory (in this case is: C:\Program Files\MsBuild\Company) ??
I use VS 2008, .NET 3.5
Edit: I have seen the reference, How can I get current directory in msbuild script?, but not valid for me: $(MSBuildProjectDirectory give me this value, C:\Work\Company\Projects\Test001\ProyectSW3
With MSBuild 4 you can use the new property 'MSBuildThisFileDirectory' see my blog http://sedodream.com/2010/03/11/MSBuild40ReservedProperties.aspx. If you are not using MSBuild 4, you cannot do this easily.
Your question has already been answered in another post here: MsBuild: Get current directory of targets. I hope the answers there satisfy you.
You can pretty much use MSBuildProjectDirectory which will give you the path to your current project file and you can build upon that.
Related
I have a solution file (MySolution.sln) with a single project in it (MyProject.vcxproj). I would like to execute a custom target (MyCustomTarget) on my project through the solution. It would look something like this:
msbuild MySolution.sln /t:MyCustomTarget
When I execute the command, I'll get an error message:
MySolution.sln.metaproj : error MSB4057: The target "MyCustomTarget" does not exist in the project. [MySolution.sln]
You can replace MyCustomTarget with any standard targets from Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.targets (e.g.: ClCompile, Link) or any other target of your choice you include from .targets files in MyProject.vcxproj. None of them would work.
When the environment variable msbuildemitsolution is set to 1, I can inspect the generated MySolution.sln.metaproj file. At the bottom 4 targets are specified: Build, Rebuild, Clean, and Publish. Using these targets instead of MyCustomTarget, the project builds ok. Also, if I specify the project file instead of the solution file, it builds too:
msbuild MyProject.vcxproj /t:MyCustomTarget
But using this format, I will lose the OutDir property, manually have to set the Configuration and Platform, so I just lose the benefits of having a solution file.
Is there any way I can use my custom target with the solution file I originally intended?
As far as I understand the problem is that msbuild generates this intermediate project file (mysolution.sln.metproj) but that will won have the imports from MyProject.vcxproj, including the .targets files. No wonder MyCustomTarget is not recognized.
My current workaround is using the project file with msbuild and trying not to miss anything from the solution file:
msbuild MyProject.vcxproj /t:MyCustomTarget /p:Configuration=MyConfig;Platform=MyPlatform;OutDir=MySolution\Platform_MyConfig\
But this is not a proper solution, inflexible, prone to error and does not automatically adapt changes in the solution file.
MSBuild 15 now raises custom targets automatically into the solution metaproj so your initial approach of running the target directly on the solution is now supposed to work.
I think you already answered your question. The answer is NO. There is no target called "MyCustomTarget" inside the .sln.metaproj file, so MSBuild gives you that error message.
Now, to resolve your problem with passing extra parameters on command line. Passing platform and configuration won't be required, if you set defaults in your .vcxproj file. Add this somewhere in your project file, before any of the standard target files are imported:
<Platform Condition="'$(Platform)'==''">MyPlatform</Platform>
<Configuration Condition="'$(Configuration)'==''">MyConfiguration</Configuration>
Configuring OutDir, which is shared across all projects in solution can be done like this. I will assume your solution is structured so that .sln file is in root folder, and all projects are in sub-folders (arbitrarily deep) under the root, or in the same folder as the solution. If this is not the case, you will have to tweak the code a little to adjust to your situation.
Right after you defined Platform and Configuration in your project, add this property group:
<PropertyGroup>
<RootFolder>$([MSBuild]::GetDirectoryNameOfFileAbove($(MSBuildThisFileDirectory),MySolutionName.sln))</RootFolder>
<OutDir Condition="'$(OutDir)'==''">$(RootFolder)\$(Platform)_$(Configuration)</OutDir>
</PropertyGroup>
The code above follows your convention of setting OutDir to MySolution\MyPlatform_MyConfiguration.
The downside of all this approach is that you have to manually modify all projects in your solution. However it will give you lots of flexibility in the future. For example, any common settings shared across all projects, could be extracted into single .props file that you can <Import> into every project, so changes to configuration could be done in one place.
In order to use the custom target that exists in your project file while building using the solution file, use the following format:
msbuild MySolution.sln /t:MyProject:MyCustomTarget
Note that if the project is in a sub folder (solution folder) you need to add the folder name:
msbuild MySolution.sln /t:src\MyProject:MyCustomTarget
and if the project name contains spaces or dots they are replaced with underscores.
We have a ASP.NET MVC with 4-5 different build configurations. Whenever we change the build configuration, we need to delete the obj folder for the web project, since we get the 'allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' error. A pain, but we managed by deleting the folder in pre/post build events.
Now I need to configure our CI to build deployment packages. This means that I cannot delete the obj folder. Every time I compile e.g. with the following msbuild parameters
/p:CreatePackageOnPublish=true /p:DeployOnBuild=true
I recieve the error:
web.config(123): error ASPCONFIG: It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS.
As far as I understand, the problem is that there's multiple .config files in the project - In our case, there's not. I could really use some help to find an explanation and find a permanent (no- hack) fix.
Edit:
This question is marked as a duplicate, but the corresponding answers and cause(s) in the 2 threads, are clearly different from each other. Not sure what is intended with this tag - I've read that particular post before posting this question, as it didn't answer my question. There's multiple causes for this error message. It is 'similar', but definitely not a duplicate!
There is a similar question here on SO with some good solutions for this issue.
The problem is that building a deployment package creates a copy of the web.config in a subfolder of /obj. That will normally be be cleared out if you do a rebuild or a clean. However, if you build a deployment package in one configuration (e.g. Debug) and then switch to another confguration (e.g. Release) the obj/Debug folder is not cleared out and the web.config file there causes problems.
The quick solution is to clean all configurations and then do a (re)build. Alternatively you could delete the /obj folder in your project.
To permanently resolve the issue you can either move the intermediate output (/obj) out of your project folder or modify the project to force a clean of all configurations on rebuild.
I too was deleting the obj folder until I had a conflict with a build script which required it. Catch-22, I used the accepted answer on the following SO link to move the location of the Obj folder to C:\Temp\BUILD. You have to do it per csproj file, but it is a great solution.
Here is the link: VisualStudio: How to save the obj folder somewhere else
Note that I am using a variable for the project name.
R:\Temp\Build\Debug\$(MSBuildProjectName)
I have the above line in both debug and release sections for all my projects, including class projects. My build path is a ram drive for speed. See this SO for more info: How to access macro variables within csproj file?
I just answered a similar question here. To recap, I ran into this problem in one of our MVC projects, and it was due to having the MvcBuildViews property in the project file set to true. Setting the property to false fixed the problem.
<MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews>
I also found this answer which outlines an alternative that does not require turning off view building.
I don't know that there is an "official" fix as it just seemed to start on multiple projects of mine for no reason that I can find in Visual Studio Premium 2012 (never happened in previous versions of VS).
As a work around to automate the deletion of the obj directory as others have said, similar to an answer by user Casual in this post VisualStudio: How to save the obj folder somewhere else, where unfortunately just moving the location of the obj folder didn't always seem to work.
Instead I added a few commands under Build Events in the Pre-build event command line:
rd "$(ProjectDir)obj" /S /Q
md "$(ProjectDir)obj"
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\Debug"
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\Release"
You can change/add/remove subfolders to match your custom build configurations using the line where buildConfigName matches the name of the build configuration you are using:
md "$(ProjectDir)obj\buildConfigName"
Hope this helps!
That error indicates that you are trying to something specific to an application at an IIS tree level that isn't defined as an application. For example if you try to do app-level functions in a web.config in a virtual directory, you will get that error. You need to find the path you are deploying to and make sure that it is defined in IIS as an application vs a folder or vdir.
Cleaning the solution (Right click Solution in VS, clean), worked for me.
I had the same error but with a deployed page.. Then realized my webserver's clock was set back to 2010 for some reason. set it to the correct date fix my problem
Clean your project
Remove the /obj folder (probably using publish and deploy? - there is a bug in it)
Althoug the problem is explained and solved in one way in the accepted answer, I wanted to show a solution which can be better for other cases. This solution has been included in some version of VS, but I can only say that I had the problem in VS 2013 Update 5. (See the "Beware" below, it could be fixed in this version, but not working only in my particular case).
I borrowed the soltuion from Error: allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level on Visual Studio Connect.
The solution consist in including these lines to the web application project (.csproj file) which handle the deletion of the offedning intermediate files (which wans't a solution for the accepted answer, as he needed those intermediate files):
<!--Deal with http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/779737/error-allowdefinition-machinetoapplication-beyond-application-level,
we will need to clean up our temp folder before MVC project starts the pre-compile-->
<PropertyGroup>
<_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews Condition=" '$(_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews)'=='' ">true</_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="CleanupForBuildMvcViews" Condition=" '$(_EnableCleanOnBuildForMvcViews)'=='true' and '$(MVCBuildViews)'=='true' " BeforeTargets="MvcBuildViews">
<ItemGroup>
<_PublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup Include="Database;TransformWebConfig;CSAutoParameterize;InsertAdditionalCS;ProfileTransformWebConfig;Package;AspnetCompileMerge" />
</ItemGroup>
<!--Force msbuild to expand all the wildcard characters so to get real file paths-->
<CreateItem Include="#(_PublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup->'$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath)**\%(identity)\**\*')">
<Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_EvaluatedPublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup" />
</CreateItem>
<Delete Files="#(_EvaluatedPublishTempFolderNamesToCleanup)" />
</Target>
Beware: for some reason, probably because I included it myself in the project, my build target for building the views was named "BuildViews", instead of "MvcBuildViews", so I had to modify the BeforeTargets attribute accordingly.
This is not necessarily the exact same issue, and to be honest, probably down to pure lack of knowledge on my part, however I had this same error when:
I set up a standard asp.net new project actually just used for HTML5 stuff so nothing other than the usual project structure
I then (not thinking perhaps!) added a new WCF REST project (which actually was just another base asp.net project using very good examples from http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/128478/Consuming-WCF-REST-Services-Using-jQuery-AJAX-Call?fid=1597004&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&prof=False&sort=Position&view=Quick&fr=26#xx0xx and http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2010/08/21/restful-wcf-services-with-no-svc-file-and-no-config.aspx
The problem was I added the WCF REST project (#2) as a SUB-DIRECTORY of the main project (#1) and then tried to build! even if I cleaned the project of course.. I also made both projects use IISexpress because I thought there was an issue using the same port or something.
Of course the build process saw the web.config from #1 and then a sub-dir with another web.config #2..
I realise this probably should be a very basic understood gotcha and it has caught me out a while ago, however sometimes it's the simplest of mistakes that are a real pain!
Might help others... who perhaps haven't had their morning coffee..
tip 1: clean & then rebuild.
tip 2: just close VS and open again.
tip 3: the downloaded project may be inside another sub folder... open the folder which has you .net files.
c:/demo1/demo/ (all files)
You should have to open demo from vs... not demo1.
I have a somewhat a similar problem, i had the main config as Copy Always so it copied the config to the bin directory. When i republished the main project, i got the MachineToApplication error. So my solution was to just change the config to Do Not Copy and remove the extra configuration in the bin folder.
I have had my first successful build using CC.Net + MSBuild on legacy project. Only took 8 hours.
My newb question is: Where is the output?
My ArtifactDirectory is empty. Where did everything go?
Did you specify the ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.MSBuild.dll logger in the msbuild-task? Did you have the xmllogger publisher?
EDIT:
What are you looking for : the results/logs that goes into the dashboard and mail or the website/dll/program you built?
Could you post your project configuration?
EDIT2:
The website/dll you built are located in the outDir you specified in your msbuild task. If you didn't override either the OutDir or the OutputPath property (in your msbuild task or msbuild build script) your website should be located in the WebProject\bin\Release (or Debug)_PublishedWebsites and your dlls should be located in every Project_dir\bin\Release (or Debug).
If you want a common output you need to specify it by overriding OutputPath or BaseOutputPath (see here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629394.aspx ).
If your source projects don't compile to custom folders, the code will be located wherever the source was pulled down to on the build box. As Benjamin stated, this will be the workingDirectory specified in the msbuild task.
If you didn't specify a working directory, I believe CruiseControl.net puts code in:
C:\Program Files\CruiseControl.NET\server\[Project Name]\WorkingDirectory
Here's my situation: I'm trying to understand how msbuild works by looking at the build files located in the .NET framework install path:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5>dir /s/b microsoft*
Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v3.5.xml
Microsoft.Build.xsd
Microsoft.Common.targets
Microsoft.Common.Tasks
Microsoft.CSharp.targets
Microsoft.Data.Entity.targets
Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets
Microsoft.WinFx.targets
MSBuild\Microsoft.Build.Commontypes.xsd
MSBuild\Microsoft.Build.Core.xsd
I'm assuming that msbuild starts with Microsoft.Common.Targets, and then at some point in the future msbuild 'looks' at my vb project file extension (.vbproj) and loads 'Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets'.
two questions:
1) Is my interpetation correct?
2) can you explain to me, where is the code that determines that this is a .vbproj file, and loads 'Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets' accordingly? Is the code locked away in an assembly somewhere, or is it visible in the build files listed above?
It "starts" with your .vbproj file. Take a look at that file, it will <Import> the Microsoft.VisualBasic.targets, which in turn will <Import> Microsoft.Common.targets.
In 4.0, which is currently available in Beta, there is a /preprocess switch which will make this all clear.
I am trying to learn how to use MSBuild so we can use it to build our project. There's what seems to be a very big hole in the documentation, and I find the hole everywhere I look, the hole being how do you name or otherwise designate the MSBuild project file?
For example, the tutorial on MSBuild that can be downloaded from Microsoft goes into some detail on the contents of the build file. For example, here's a little bit of their Hello World project file.
<Project MSBuildVersion = "1.0" DefaultTargets = "Compile">
<Property appname = "HelloWorldCS"/>
<Item Type = "CSFile" Include = "consolehwcs1.cs"/>
<Target Name = "Compile">
<Task Name = "CSC" Sources = "#(CSFile)">
<OutputItem TaskParameter = "OutputAssembly" Type = "EXEFile" Include = "$(appname).exe"/>
</Task>
<Message Text="The output file is #(EXEFile)"/>
</Target>
</Project>
And it goes on blah, blah, blah Items blah blah blah tasks, here's how you do this and here's how you do that. Useless, completely useless. Because they never get around to saying how this xml file is supposed to be recognized by the MSBuild app. Is it supposed to be named in a particular way? Is it supposed to be placed in a particular directory? Both? Neither?
It isn't just the MS tutorial where they don't tell about it. I haven't been able to find it on MSDN, or on any link I can wring out of Groups.Google, either.
Does someone here know? I sure hope so.
Edited to add: I mistook the
.proj file included in the tutorial
to be the .csproj file and that is what
one fed to MSBuild, but it took the answer below before I saw this.
It should have been rather obvious, but I missed it.
You can name the file as you see fit. From the help for MSBuild
msbuild.exe /?
Microsoft (R) Build Engine Version 2.0.50727.3053
[Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 2.0.50727.3053]
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 2005. All rights reserved.
Syntax: MSBuild.exe [options] [project file]
So if you save the file as mybuildfile.xml you would use the syntax:
msbuild.exe mybuildfile.xml
You don't have to specify the build file if you respect following strategy:
Today, when you invoke msbuild.exe
from the command line and don't
specify any project files as
arguments, then we do some auto
inferral and scanning and decide if we
should build anything. If we find
either a msbuild project (anything
that has an extension of *proj) or a
solution file (.sln), we will build
either the project or the solution as
long as there is only one solution or
one project in the directory. If there
is a solution and a project, we will
give preference to the solution. If
there's more than one project or more
than one solution, we issue an error
message because we can't decide which
one to build.
This is taken from New Feature Feedback Request: /IgnoreProjectExtensions - A new command-line switch.
I always name my manually written scripts build.proj.
Not a direct answer, but related; if you use .msproj as your extension, Visual Studio gives you intellisense.
Or for the truly lazy, like me.
msbuild.exe project-file-name.vcproj /t:Rebuild /p:Configuration=Release
Visual Studio 2012 recognizes the .msbuildproj as an extension and will treat it as a "project" in the Solution Explorer.