Question

I am writing a deployment script using MSBuild. I want to clean my web directories prior to copying all the new files in. My current ‘Clean’ target looks like this:

 <Target Name='Clean'>     <Exec Command='del %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\* /Q /F /S' IgnoreExitCode='true' />   </Target> 

This takes an considerable amount of time as each file is deleted from each subfolder individually.

Is there a nice way to remove everything from a given folder with out deleting that folder? I want to maintain my permissions and vdir setup info.

Answer 1

You can rmdir /s /q each sub-directory individually, then del %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\* /Q /F your clean target. For example:

 <Target Name='Clean'>     <Exec Command='rmdir %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\subdir1 /Q /S' IgnoreExitCode='true' />     <Exec Command='rmdir %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\subdir2 /Q /S' IgnoreExitCode='true' />     ...     <Exec Command='rmdir %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\subdirN /Q /S' IgnoreExitCode='true' />     <Exec Command='del %(DeploymentSet.LocalWebRoot)\* /Q /F' IgnoreExitCode='true' />   </Target>