Question

When we build our Visual Studio 2010 Database Project from the command line using msbuild.exe it can sometimes run twice from the same command line.

We call msbuild from a nAnt script, and just call the ‘Build’ target. Our database project is quite large so it can take about 4 mins to run through a single time. When it runs through twice our database build takes over 8 minutes.

Here is the exec section we use to call the build. It runs on a .sln file that only has a single .dbproj in it.

<exec program="${framework::get-tool-path('msbuild.exe')}" append="true" failonerror="true" verbose="true">
    <arg value="${database.sln}" />
    <arg value="/p:OutputPath=${build.output.database}" />
    <arg value="/nologo" />
    <arg value="/t:Build" />
    <arg value="/p:Configuration=Release" />
    <arg value="/p:WorkingDir=&quot;.&quot;" />
    <arg value="/verbosity:normal" />
    <arg value="/v:m" />
</exec>

The output we get looks like

Creating a model to represent the project...
Loading project references...
Loading project files...
Building the project model and resolving object interdependencies...
Validating the project model...
(x) problems have been detected.
[a list of warnings based on the db analysis]
The results are saved in (y).
Creating a model to represent the project...
Loading project references...
Loading project files...
Building the project model and resolving object interdependencies...
Validating the project model...
(x) problems have been detected.
[a list of warnings based on the db analysis]
The results are saved in (y).

Can anyone help as to why the target seems to be called twice (only sometimes – I haven’t figured out why only sometimes). The script always runs on an empty folder structure so there is never a build output left over from a previous run of the build.

Answer 1

First of all try to change the output verbosity to diagnostic for MSBuild:

<arg value="/v:diag" />

And the same for the Ant script. I don’t have experience with Ant , but you shpould know how to do it 😉
Hopefully you will find a reason in the diagnostic logs…

BTW:
You have duplicate command line options for MSBuild. Remove one arg from the following:

<arg value="/verbosity:normal" />
<arg value="/v:m" />

/v is abbreviation for /verbosity see MSDN for MSBuild command line options reference.