Question

Background:

We’re using a 3rd party tool in our .NET C# solution. This tool has it’s own syntax and integrates with Visual Studio. When we use this tool we write its markup within Visual Studio and then when we build the solution the custom tool runs and generates a .cs file based on the markup we have written.

This generated source file contains a version number which is causing problems when we check these in to version control (Endless conflicts). Our understanding is that it’s considered best practice not to check in generated source files.

So we excluded the generated .cs files from SVN and then the next issue we ran in to was that the Visual Studio solution referenced these files, so when TeamCity (Our continuous build/integration software) went to build the solution it would fail straight away as it couldn’t find these files.

We then removed these from the solution as well as excluding them from SVN, this fixed the original issue, we’re no longer checking in generated code and it builds fine in TeamCity (As the files are re-generated with every build).

We now have a new problem – As the generated files are no longer included in the solution, intellisense and code inspection fails as the generated classes cannot be found. The solution builds just fine (As again the code is re-generated during the build).

Question

Is there a way to tell ReSharper to include generated .cs files in its code inspection? These files are external to the solution but they are in the obj directory.

Cheers,

Tyler

Answer 1

As mentioned in my comment, one workaround is to keep the generated files in the solution (but not in source control), while adding a pre-build step to create empty .cs files (if the real generated file isn’t present) so that the file is always available during a build.

In my projects, I use the following MSBuild targets to generate empty files by using the Touch task. You may need to make some modifications – in my case, the target files are actually defined within a project not at the solution level; and the build action for the files is set to “None” which is important to understand how these targets work.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="4.0">

<!--
Creates empty 'dummy' files for any files that are specified but do not exist. 
To be processed, the following must be true:

1. The file is included in an ItemGroup called CanCreateDummy, e.g.
      <ItemGroup>
        <CanCreateDummy Include="SomeFile.cs" />
      </ItemGroup>
   If you want to specify a CanCreateDummy file in the .csproj file, you would
   modify the above slightly as follows to prevent it appearing twice:
      <ItemGroup>
        <CanCreateDummy Include="SomeFile.cs">
          <Visible>false</Visible>
        </CanCreateDummy>
      </ItemGroup>

2. The file is included in the ItemGroup called None. This is normally performed 
   by adding the file to the project in the usual way through Visual Studio, and 
   then setting the file's Build Action property to None.
-->
<Target
  Name="CreateDummyFiles"
  AfterTargets="BeforeBuild"
    >
<!--
This voodoo creates the intersection of 2 lists - @(CanCreateDummy) and @(None) 
(this latter item is defined in the project file). We want to create a filtered 
list of all items that are in both these lists, which is called _ProjectDummyFiles.
See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msbuild/archive/2006/05/30/610494.aspx for how the 
Condition voodoo works.
-->
<CreateItem Include="@(CanCreateDummy)" Condition="'%(Identity)' != ''  and '@(None)' != ''" >
  <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_ProjectDummyFiles"/>
</CreateItem>

<Message
    Text="Creating dummy settings file @(_ProjectDummyFiles)"
    Condition=" !Exists('%(_ProjectDummyFiles.FullPath)')"
        />

<Touch
    AlwaysCreate="true"
    Files="@(_ProjectDummyFiles)"
    Condition=" !Exists('%(_ProjectDummyFiles.FullPath)')"
        />

</Target>
</Project>

Hope this helps

Rich