Question

about a dozen projects in my VS solution have the same line:

<PostBuildEvent>
  <Command>signtool sign /f ..\Certificates\MyCert.pfx /fd sha256 "$(TargetPath)"</Command>
</PostBuildEvent>

I know that since it is using msbuild, there is a way to have a common target and have each projects reference this but I am struggling to come up with the exact syntax for this.

Answer 1

Create a new file, let’s call it CommonDefinitions.targets, with the following content:

<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <PostBuildEvent>signtool sign /f ..\Certificates\MyCert.pfx /fd sha256 "$(TargetPath)"</PostBuildEvent>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Then in each file that you want to override the PostBuildEvent, add this line:

<Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\CommonDefinitions.targets" />

If you want to merge that with custom post-build steps, you will add additional target to the post-build by overriding PostBuildEventDependsOn. E.g.:

<PropertyGroup>
    <PostBuildEventDependsOn>$(PostBuildEventDependsOn);MyAdditionalPostBuildTarget</PostBuildEventDependsOn>
</PropertyGroup>

<Target Name="MyAdditionalPostBuildTarget">
    <!-- add any actions here -->
</Target>

and