Question

Is there any way to get an assembly’s version number like we previously used to do with Msbuild with Team Build 2010 Workflow? Here is a simple example of how we used to get an assemby’s version with %(Info.Version).

  <Target Name="CheckFileVersion" DependsOnTargets="AfterDrop">
   <ItemGroup>
      <MyAssemblies Include='$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Release\MyApp.exe' />
    </ItemGroup>
    <GetAssemblyIdentity AssemblyFiles="@(MyAssemblies)">
      <Output TaskParameter="Assemblies" ItemName="Info"/>
    </GetAssemblyIdentity>
  </Target>

I’ve found some methods to create custom Activities with many lines of code, but I think there must be a simpler way to do it.

Answer 1

GoRoS had the right idea, but it only works correctly the first time.

In order to avoid this problem you have to run this code, or similar code in a different AppDomain from the Build Agent, Powershell and an InvokeProcessActivity can solve our problem.

GetAssemblyVersionNumber.ps1:

$error.clear()

if ($args.length -ne 1)
{
   Write-Error "Usage: GetAssemblyVersionNumber.ps1 <Assembly>"
   exit 1
}

# Now load the assembly
$assembly = [System.Reflection.Assembly]::Loadfile($args[0])

# Get name, version and display the results
$name = $assembly.GetName()
Write-Host $name.version

And the following gets added to your build process template

InvokeProcessActivity
    Name: Call Powershell Version Script
    Filename: "powershell.exe"
    Arguments: "-NonInteractive -NoProfile -Command " _
               + "c:\Builds\GetAssemblyVersionNumber.ps1" _
               + " '" + BuildDirectory + "\Binaries\Foobar.dll'"
    Handle Standard Output (stdOutput)

        AssignActivity
            To: VersionInfo
            Value: stdOutput