Question

I have two questions re: visual studio 2008 and post-build events.

1) How do i dynamically list the msbuild.exe full path, to be called by the post-build event? Currently, i have the following (which works beautifully, btw):-

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v3.5\msbuild.exe 
    "$(ProjectDir)MSBuild\MSBuildSettings.xml"

.. but that would only work if u have a x64 bit environment. Is there a way to use some built in magic setting? eg. $(MsBuildPath)msbuild.exe "blah....xml" ??

2) My msbuild task does some stuff then generates a txt file as the output. I define the output path in the msbuild xml file as such..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/MsBuild/2003">
    <UsingTask TaskName="CustomTask" AssemblyFile="MyAssembly.dll"/>
    <Target>
        <CustomTask
           ...
           OutputFile="Foo.txt"
        />
    <Target>
</Project>

How can i pass in the real output folder, to the msbuild file? I tried…

OutputFile="$(OutDir)Foo.txt"

but that failed 🙁

Cheers!

Update #1 – Answer to the second question..

I’ve figured out a way to answer the second question — not sure if it’s the best one though .. so I’m open to other ideas 🙂

XML file changes :: add a property group that sets the internal variable name IF no outside arguments were passed to the msbuild.exe executable.

    <PropertyGroup>
        <OutputFile Condition=" '$(OutputFile)'=='' ">
            ..\SomeFolder\Foo.txt</OutputFile>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <Target>
        <CustomTask
           ...
           OutputFile="$(OutputFile)"
        />
    <Target>
</Project>

Now, call the msbuild executable like …

msbuild.exe "C:\Temp Foo\Blah\MsbuildSettings" /p:OutputFile="C:\Folder 1\Folder 2\blah\"

and that works 🙂

Answer 1

For question 1, use property MSBuildBinPath

For question 2, use property OutputPath (C# or VB projects)

OutputFile="$(OutputPath)Foo.txt"