Question

I’m trying to set up my environment for developing, debugging and deploying Windows Desktop Gadgets. I’ve hit a bit of a roadblock in my project, where I can’t run a build on my gadget when the configuration is set to “Debug”. If the configuration is set to “Release”, the build goes through the following custom tasks:

1. Copy gadget contents to a seperate folder.
2. Minify/obfuscate the javascript files, removing comments and whitespace.
3. Package the files into a CAB file.
4. Sign the CAB file with a digital certificate.

This runs just fine, my “Debug” configuration has the following tasks defined

1. Copy gadget folder to AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\.
2. Start the gadget using the IDesktopGadget interface.

If I copy those two tasks to the “Release” configuration, they run just fine – no problems whatsoever. I’ve tried creating a seperate configuration called “Test”, copied from the “Release” configuration.

If I try to build any configuration other than “Release”, I get an instant message saying “Build succeeded” but no tasks have run at all.

EDIT: I’ve started a bounty because I still have the same problem with VS 2010 RC and it’s very frustrating.

FURTHER EDIT:
Thanks to John I was able to debug the build process. It led me to realize that the <Target> element with condition for debugging was being completely ignored (not even processed). When I swapped the position of my <Target> elements, it worked:

<Target Name="Build" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'">
  <!--
      <Obfuscate PathToJasob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Jasob.com\Jasob 3.5" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Output="$(GadgetName)_obf" log="jasob_log.txt" />
  -->
  <BuildGadget BuildFormat="CAB" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
  <SignGadget CertName="Cert1" TimestampURL="http://timestamp.comodoca.com/authenticode" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
</Target>
<Target Name="Build" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <CopyToGadgets GadgetFolder="$(GadgetFolder)" GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
  <RunGadget GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
</Target>

So it looks like the second <Target Name="Build"> element overrides the first, despite the Condition attribute being present. What can I do?

Answer 1

As Joe suggests:

Change your output path like this, and see if that fixes the issue:

<OutputPath>bin\Debug\</OutputPath>

Update

Have you tried running msbuild /verbosity:diagnostic ?

Can you try that and show the output?

Second Update

Make one target ‘build’, and then make two tasks in that target:

<Target Name="Build">
    <CallTarget Targets="BuildRelease" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'" />
    <CallTarget Targets="BuildDebug" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'" />
</Target>

<Target Name="BuildRelease">
    <!--
        <Obfuscate PathToJasob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Jasob.com\Jasob 3.5" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Output="$(GadgetName)_obf" log="jasob_log.txt" />
    -->
    <BuildGadget BuildFormat="CAB" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
    <SignGadget CertName="Cert1" TimestampURL="http://timestamp.comodoca.com/authenticode" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
</Target>

<Target Name="BuildDebug">
  <CopyToGadgets GadgetFolder="$(GadgetFolder)" GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
  <RunGadget GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
</Target>