Question

I know you can have post build command line events… executing a batch file, etc. What I can’t find is any information about whether or not there is a post DEPLOY version of this.

I build my solution all the time, but I only deploy once in a while. There are certain things I do manually, which I would prefer to do automatically via a batch file after a successful deploy.

Can this be done?

Answer 1

Found my answer here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t9883dzc.aspx#1

Sadly, there are issues with this solution which I posted in a separate thread which I can not seem to locate at the moment… facepalm

Tasks provide the code that runs during the build process. Tasks are contained in targets. A library of typical tasks is included with MSBuild, and you can also create your own tasks. For more information about the library of tasks that are included with MSBuild, see Task reference.

Tasks
Examples of tasks include Copy, which copies one or more files, MakeDir, which creates a directory, and Csc, which compiles Visual C# source code files. Each task is implemented as a .NET class that implements the ITask interface, which is defined in the Microsoft.Build.Framework.dll assembly.

There are two approaches you can use when implementing a task:

Implement the ITask interface directly.

Derive your class from the helper class, Task, which is defined in the Microsoft.Build.Utilities.dll assembly. Task implements ITask and provides default implementations of some ITask members. Additionally, logging is easier.

In both cases, you must add to your class a method named Execute, which is the method that is called when the task runs. This method takes no parameters and returns a Boolean value: true if the task succeeded or false if it failed. The following example shows a task that performs no action and returns true.