Question

I have an msbuild proj file as follows.

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"   DefaultTargets="Demo">

 <ItemGroup>
   <AllFiles Include="src\**\*" ></SrcFiles>
 </ItemGroup>

 <PropertyGroup>
  <DestFolder>copy\</DestFolder>
 </PropertyGroup>

 <ItemGroup>
  <Transform01
   Include="@(AllFiles >'$(DestFolder)%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
  </ItemGroup>

 <Target Name="Demo">
  <Message Text="%40(Transform01):" Importance="high" />
   <Message Text="@(Transform01)" />
   <Message Text="===== Copying files =====" Importance="high" />
   <Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)" DestinationFiles="@(Transform01)" />
   <Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)" DestinationFiles="@(AllFiles >'$(DestFolder)%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
 </Target>

 </Project>

The two copy process specified in the above target is throwing errors as follows
First copy is throwing error as follows

 (error MSB3094: "DestinationFiles" refers to 1 item(s), and "SourceFiles" refers to 14   item(s). They must have the same number of items.)

The second copy is throwing error as below

error MSB3021: Unable to copy file "..\Data\Files\dll\1.dll" to "@(AllFiles >'copy\dll\1.dll')".Illegal characters in path.

But if i write the copy process as shown below copy will take place with no error

<Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)" DestinationFiles="$(DestFolder)%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)" />

Why this is happening?

Answer 1

You may be missing a – character in your transforms.

 <Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)" DestinationFiles="@(AllFiles ->'$(DestFolder)%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />

The following should also work.

<Copy SourceFiles="@(AllFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(DestFolder)\%(AllFiles.RecursiveDir)" />

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3e54c37h.aspx