Question

I am using a pre-build task in Visual Studio 2008 that invokes msbuild:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe $(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\version.targets /p:Configuration=$(ConfigurationName) 

Inside version.targets, I am updating the AssemblyInfo.cs file to replace version information:

   <FileUpdate         Encoding='ASCII'         Files='$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs'         Regex='AssemblyInformationalVersion\(&quot;.*&quot;\)\]'          ReplacementText='AssemblyInformationalVersion(&quot;Product $(ConfigurationString) ($(buildDate))&quot;)]'     /> 

When I build the project through Visual Studio 2008, it builds without any problems.

But when I look at the resulting exe’s version information, it contains the previous time stamp even though the AssemblyInfo.cs has been changed with the ‘correct’ one.

It seems that the pre-build’s changes aren’t seen by the main compilation task and it’s always one behind.

Any ideas of what I’m doing wrong?

Answer 1

I don’t think you are doing anything wrong – it’s a bug.

I have reported it here – check if you can reproduce it and add a validation, maybe we can get it fixed by MS.

EDIT: I tried the suggestion by ‘Si’ to update the file in the ‘BeforeBuild’ event – however I still get the same wrong result with Visual Studio 2008/SP1.

UPDATE/WORKAROUND: MS has responded to the bug report. As a workaround you can add

<UseHostCompilerIfAvailable>FALSE</UseHostCompilerIfAvailable> 

to your csproj file.