Question

Quick question about MSBuild. I have the following MSBuild file in directory d:\MyDirectory

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" >
<Import Project="d:\MyDirectory\BuildTest\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj"></Import> 
</Project>

When I run this the build fails because BuildTest.csproj can’t find the .cs source files and it seems to be looking in d:\MyDirectory. I was expecting the working directory to be set to that of the BuildTest.csproj and thus be able to resolve the references. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I think ,the import element is used to import other MSBuild projects into this one (see here).
If you want to specify C# projects to build, you should do it like this:

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" >
    <ItemGroup>
        <ProjectReferences Include="d:\MyDirectory\BuildTest\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj" />
            <!--more-->
    </ItemGroup>

Then if you want to build all referenced projects, you can for example do this:

<Target Name="BuildAllProjects">
    <MSBuild ContinueOnError="False" Projects="@(ProjectReferences)"
                Targets="Clean;ReBuild">
    </MSBuild>
</Target>

Remember though, that this is just 1 of many ways of doing things with MSBuild. There are a lot of good articles on MSDN on this topic, should you require more customization.