Question

Is there a way to force MsBuild to output target dependency information in a structured form similar to makedepend? I need this at the solution level for a solution containing C# and C++ projects. I’m not picky about the output format.

I’ve considered that the C# dependencies can be determined by processing the .csproj files and building a DAG. Likewise I could run an open-source makedepend on the C++ sources and go from there. I’m really trying not to roll my own here — this seems like something that MsBuild ought to be able to just do, if even for diagnostic purposes.

Answer 1

I solved this without too much yak shaving. Obviously MsBuild does have the dependency info during the build so my approach is to wrap the build with a custom target that writes the dependency to a .depends file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

  <!-- Write project dependencies to a .depends file, one line per dependency -->
  <Target Name="OutputProjectDependencies">
    <Delete Files="$(OutputPath)\$(TargetFileName).depends"/>
    <WriteLinesToFile File="$(OutputPath)\$(TargetFileName).depends" 
      Lines="@(CscDependencies->'%(FullPath)');@(ReferencePath->'%(FullPath)');@(Content->'%(FullPath)');@(_NoneWithTargetPath->'%(FullPath)')"
      Overwrite="false"
      Encoding="UTF-8"/>
    <WriteLinesToFile File="$(OutputPath)\$(TargetFileName).depends" 
      Lines="@(ClDependencies->'%(FullPath)')"
      Overwrite="false"
      Encoding="UTF-8"/>
  </Target>

  <ItemGroup>
    <CscDependencies Include="@(Compile);@(EmbeddedResource)"/>
    <ClDependencies Include="@(ClCompile);@(ClInclude)"/>
  </ItemGroup>

  <PropertyGroup>
    <BuildDependsOn>
      $(BuildDependsOn);
      OutputProjectDependencies;
    </BuildDependsOn>
  </PropertyGroup>

</Project>

This is not quite as robust as I’d like for C++ projects (it lacks included header and link library dependencies) but could probably be further enhanced. I believe this is a very solid approach for C# — it includes referenced assemblies, embedded resources and content.