Question

I’ve create a Project, which contains two folders. The “src” folder contains coreelements, the “plugin” folder contains different plugins (each plugin = one file).

Here an example:

MyProject
|_src
    |_attributeclass.cs
    |_basepluginparent.cs
    |_otherneededclass.cs
|_plugins
    |_plugin1extendsfrombaseclass.cs
    |_plugin2extendsfrombaseclass.cs
    |_plugin3extendsfrombaseclass.cs
    |_plugin4extendsfrombaseclass.cs

Now I want to start a build, which creates me 5 files :
1 baseplugin.dll ( containing all 3 coreclasses)
4 files called plugin1.dll … plugin4.dll

so all plugin refer to baseclass, but i also need the baseclass as own library

How can I do this?

Answer 1

If you wan’t to handle it using MSBuild, couldn’t you do something like:

<Csc Sources="_src\*.cs" 
     TargetType="library"
     OutputAssembly="Out\Base.dll" />

to compile the base.dll, and then create an itemgroup of the plugins and build them in batches:

<ItemGroup>
  <Plugin Include="_plugins\*.cs" />
</ItemGroup>

<Message Text="%(Plugin.Identity) => %(Plugin.Filename).dll" />

<Csc Sources="%(Plugin.Identity)"
     References="Out\Base.dll"
     TargetType="library"
     OutputAssembly="Out\%(Plugin.Filename).dll" />

This will get you one plugin dll per source file – each linked to the base.dll.

Edit:
To make it part of your project build wrap all of the above in a target, such as:

<Target Name="BeforeBuild">

</Target>

and put it at the end of your project file (unload the project and edit the project file).