Question

I have several projects in my solution, one of which has some test scripts that get copied as part of a post build rule, is there a way to run the post build rule with out doing a “rebuild only” for that project when I want them run?

Answer 1

You could use Custom Build Step instead of post-build event and specify some dummy non-existent Output file. In this case Custom Build Step will run on every build even if project itself is up to date.

Quote from MSDN:

In Outputs, specify the name of the output file. This is a required entry; without a value for this property, the custom build step will not run. If a custom build step has more than one output, separate file names with a semicolon. The name of the output file should be what is specified in the Command Line property. The project build system will look for the file and check its date. If the file is newer than the input file or if the file is not found, then the custom build step will run.