Question

If you bring up the properties for a project item in Visual Studio, in the “Advanced” category, there’s a “Build Action” property. In my installation of Visual Studio, it contains “None”, “Compile”, “Content”, etc..

If I attempt to type an unrecognised value in the box, I get the warning “Property value is not valid”.

Is it possible to add my own values to this list? If so, how?

I’m not asking about how to add custom build types to the MSBuild project file — I already know how to do that. It’s just that I’m too lazy to “Unload Project” / “Edit Project” / change <None Include="Foo.bar"/> to <Whatever Include="Foo.bar"/> / “Reload Project” / “Yes, I’m sure I want to reload the project even though it’s already open in the editor”.

Answer 1

According to this, create the following ItemsGroup in your csproj file (or in an imported .targets file):

<ItemGroup>
  <AvailableItemName Include="Whatever" />   
</ItemGroup>

You should see another option in the list.