Question

I have this line in my build script

<Target Name="Deploy" DependsOnTargets="ServicesInstall;SitesTransfer" >

What I want to know is, in this example, what order will the targets get executed. Also, if ServiceInstall has dependencies do they get executed before or after SiteTransfer. In other words is the execution done in a depth first or breadth first manner?

Thanks,

Sachin

Answer 1

As an experiment I tried this:

<Target Name="Deploy" DependsOnTargets="ServicesInstall;SitesTransfer" />
<Target Name="ServicesInstall" DependsOnTargets="ServicesInstallDependency">
   <Message Text="ServicesInstall" />
</Target>
<Target Name="ServicesInstallDependency">
   <Message Text="ServicesInstallDependency" />
</Target>
<Target Name="SitesTransfer">
   <Message Text="SitesTransfer" />
</Target>

and this was the output:

...
1>ServicesInstallDependency:
1>  ServicesInstallDependency
1>ServicesInstall:
1>  ServicesInstall
1>SitesTransfer:
1>  SitesTransfer
...

However, I suspect the exact sequence is undefined. It is not documented on msdn.

In other words, msbuild will only guarantee that the constraints you specify are satisfied. If you need to guarantee SitesTransfer and its dependencies are executed before ServicesInstall, you should make ServicesInstall depend on SitesTransfer.