I am using the Bundler & Minifier VS2017 extension for JavaScript and CSS minification and MSBuild for other components of my ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms solution. Using Task Runner, I created an "After Build" binding so the minification happens after MSBuild. This extension updates the bundle in real time when source file changes are saved so I would like the extension to do its work only when a Release build is created.
I suppose there is no way to configure the binding so it only activates for a Release build so instead, is it possible to call Task Runner from MSBuild? Maybe something like:
<Exec Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'" Command="<Task Runner Command Here>" />
Also, besides the Visual Studio Marketplace page for the previous release and this blog page, is there any real documentation for the Task Runner that is included in VS2017?
UPDATE: I found this CLI WIKI & this article but when I install NuGet pkg I get "Could not install package 'BundlerMinifier.Core 2.0.238'. You are trying to install this pkg into a project that targets .NETFramework,Ver=v4.0" This approach not viable for a 4.0 target Web Forms solution? Not sure why it matters since minify happens at build time and not runtime.
Related
I have created a custom dotnet core project template following the documentation here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/tools/custom-templates
I can install this template, and create new projects from it, on the command line using dotnet new -i ...\mycustomtemplate and dotnet new mycustomtemplate, respectively.
Now I would like to make this template available in Visual Studio (2017)'s new project wizard but I cannot find any documentation on how to do that.
Visual Studio help only contains info about creating "Visual Studio project templates", which use a completely different configuration than the dotnet core templates, and also would not work with the dotnet core cli, as far as I understand.
Could anyone give a hint where I could find some documentation how to "install" a dotnet core custom template in Visual Studio? I would really like to have a single template that works with both Visual Studio, Jetbrains Rider and the dotnet core cli.
Or is this simply not possible?
With all credits to #willwolfram18:
You have a working custom template in the NuGet package.
Add vs-2017.3.host.json file to .template.config/.
Add Framework symbol to template.json.
Place the .nupkg file(s) into the root of a VSIX extension project and make sure to set the "Include in VSIX" flag to True.
The detailed original answer and the working prototype.
We are building a web API application for a Xamarin forms app. I included a .NET standard class library project to use as my view models. The idea being as we build out the web api endpoints - I will publish the updated class library to our internal NuGet server.
Our CI is failing. When I check in the code - I am getting a build error (using TFS 2015 on premise). The first error I received was
The default XML namespace of the project must be the MSBuild XML namespace. If the project is authored in the MSBuild 2003 format, please add xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" to the element. If the project has been authored in the old 1.0 or 1.2 format, please convert it to MSBuild 2003 format.
So I added the XML namespace to the csproj
Now I get this:
There is no target in the project.
Which version of Visual Studio do you use? Can you build the project locally with VS or build with msbuild in command line?
Anyway, based on the error message, it seems related to the version of VS which created the project and the msbuild version (New .csproj project format applied in VS 2017). You can reference below threads to troubleshoot the issue:
For the first error:
The default XML namespace of the project must be the MSBuild XML namespace
Visual Studio .NET 2015 can't open migrated project
For the second error:
Visual Studio 2010 Project Targets
Add the following attribute to the Project element:
DefaultTargets="BuildTarget"
That will tell MSBuild to use the target named "BuildTarget" when we do a build. Next add the following subelement to the Project element (just before the last line, which has "</Project>"):
<Target Name="BuildTarget">
<Message Text="Build selected" Importance="high"/>
</Target>
Then save the file and close the edit window. Then return to the Solution Explorer and right-click on the solution and select "Reload Project". Then build the project. You should get the message "Build selected" along with the output of the build, as in:
So answer is not possible. I have tried install VS 2017 on the agent - that didn't work.
We did find an article that TFS needed to be upgraded beyond Update 3.
I will end up upgrading us to 2017 in a few months - which will make this a moot point.
Thanks for the answers.
So I'm trying to automate the process for building a packaged app from a Unity project and I've hit a roadblock when trying to use MSBuild to build the final app packages.
In Unity, when you build for UWP, a folder /UWP/ is generated for the project. These contain csharp projects for two .dlls that are required to build the uwp app.
For me, these dlls got generated in a folder for each platform (x86,x64, and ARM), but this is where I hit the roadblock. To build the app packages I use MSBuild(I've also tried with the Developer Command Prompt - same result) with the command.
MSBuild "{Project}.csproj" /p:Configuration=Debug;AppxBundle=Always;AppxBundlePlatforms="x64";OutputPath="AppxPackages"
This throws the error
"C:\Users\{User}\Desktop\Output\{Project}\{Project}.csproj" (default target) (1) ->
(BeforeResolveReferences target) ->
C:\Users\{User}\Desktop\Output\{Project}\{Project}.csproj(319,5): error MSB3030: Could not copy the file "{path-to-unity-project}\UWP\Assembly-CSharp\bin\AnyCPU\Debug\Unprocessed\Assembly-CSharp.dll" because it was not found.
What is happening here is that MSBuild is attempting to find a dll in a folder "AnyCPU" that simply does not exist.
Is there any way I could tell MSBuild to individually build each platform rather than look for a combined dll, or am I using MSBuild incorrectly?
Even though I was unable to figure out why the Debug configuration looks for an assembly in the wrong directory, thanks to #Leo-MSFT I was able to fix the error that was occurring.
Firstly, I was calling MSBuild on the game project, this needed to be the generated solution instead.
Secondly, instead of using the Debug configuration, I used the Release configuration.
And finally, I was confused by the contents generated by the build compared to a build from Visual Studio (Right Click->Store->Create App Packages...). While VS generates an .appxbundle, using MSBuild will generate individually for each of the platforms selected such as game_x64.appx, game_ARM.appx, and a few more.
You can create the bundle yourself by using the makeappx tool.
How does Visual Studio (2015) work with external tools like NPM and Typescript compiler (tsc.exe) etc.? I guess, at the time of building the solution or project, something must be telling MSBuild to run these extra tools. I want to understand this under the hood operation.
It all depends...
Visual studio has multiple services and features that interlink here:
Language Services - Visual Studio can be extended with so called language services, these provide intellisense, syntax analysis, highlighting etc. For Javascript and Typescript Microsoft provides a Language service that provides such information.
MsBuild - Underneath most of Visual Studio projects lives an MsBuild project. If you search your Program files directory you'll find an MsBuild folder and underneath that there are a number of target files. This includes one for Typescript which will transform your .ts files during build. These targets files either directly use the exec MsBuild task to run tools or provide a custom MsBuild task in the form of a .NET Assembly that implements specific interfaces. These tasks can either implement the required action themselves or shell out to a tool to have it perform the action.
Roslyn - For C# and VB.NET the parsing of the projects and the background compilation of the sources is handled by a new compiler called Roslyn. This actually runs in the background while you type and has a very powerful in-memory model of all your code in your project. Roslyn supports add-ins as well in the form of analyzers and refactor action that either provide the user with feedback on common errors or provide ways to automatically rewrite/change the code.
Task Runner - The Visual Studio Task Runner is a plugin for Visual Studio that first shipped as an extension and is now part of Visual Studio. It reacts to events in the IDE (build, test, etc) and can associate actions in your package.json or grunt or bower etc scripts. The plugin will make sure your script commands are executed at the right point in time during the builds.
Test Runners - The Visual Studio Test Window has support for extensions as well, so the Mocha and the Chutzpah extension in your project will be picked up and during the test execution these plugins will be asked to first list and later execute the tests. These runners act as a kind of proxy, feeding back the list of tests and their status after execution.
Custom extensions - There are many other ways in which some vendors extend Visual Studio by providing a generic extension. These extensions may contain any of the above elements or may just listen to the events generated by Visual Studio while you do your work and react on them.
You can see the references to the typescript items if you open the .csproj
with a text editor (or from visual studio : unload the project, right-click on the project and choose edit myproject.csproj )
You'll see the typescript resources :
<ItemGroup>
<TypeScriptCompile Include="src\config.ts" />
the target for the build :
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)\TypeScript\Microsoft.TypeScript.targets" Condition="Exists('$(MSBuildExtensionsPath32)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v$(VisualStudioVersion)\TypeScript\Microsoft.TypeScript.targets')" />
The external tools, are configured in Tools/Options :
I am trying to build MSIs in a TFS Build by shelling out to DEVENV.exe (since MSBUILD does not support VSPROJs). In any case, my first installer project builds fine, the second one fails. If I reverse the order, same thing happends (i.e. the error does not follow the project). Looking at the output, I get the following errors:
Deserializing the project state for project '[MyProject].dbproj'
[MyProject].dbproj : error : Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.
Also, I get:
Package 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.TestCaseManagement.QualityToolsPackage, Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.TestCaseManagement, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' failed to load
It looks as though the first build tries to serialize the DB project (and it says it succeeds, but there is no DBML file anywhere). Then the second build tries to deserialize the DB project and fails.
I've tried resetting env settings (using the /resetusersettings flag) as well as using the /resetskippkgs flag. Nothing works.
Any ideas?
When you shell out to DevEnv, are you building that specific project (.vdproj file), or are you building the solution? It sounds like VS is trying to open the solution on the build machine and the database and test project systems aren't present.
Have you considered porting your setup project to WiX?
Start simple. Unless you're well versed in the problem you're trying to solve it's usually best to try it "by hand" before getting it running as part of a TFS build. RDP into the build server and try running the necessary commands at the command line and see what happens. You can even go simpler than that and RDP into the build machine and load Visual Studio and build it.
Bottom line is that if you can't get it to build within Visual Studio or at the command line by calling devenv.exe it won't work as part of the team build.
I am using the below Exec task to do precisely what you are doing as part of a TFS build. So I know this works. Your platform and configuration may vary depending on what you're building. The nice thing about this is that you'll have a log file at C:\Temp\MSIBuildOutputLog.txt that you can analyze for additional errors and information.
<Exec Command=""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" "$(PathToSolution)\solution.sln" /Build "Release|Mixed Platforms" /out "C:\Temp\MSIBuildOutputLog.txt"" />
One important thing to note... There is a bug in VS2010 which causes MSI generation to fail when you try to run it at the command line using devenv.exe. This took me days to find and figure out, but you need this hotfix. Worked like a charm...
http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/KB2286556
Actually it's the deployment projects that don't support msbuild. FWIW, this is all deprecated in the next release of Visual Studio so you might want to start looking at InstallShield Limited Edition and/or Windows Installer XML now before spending too much time on dead end, broken technology. Both of these alternatives have proper MSBuild support aswell as many other improvements.
It would be perhaps better and quicker to adopt WIX (Windows Installer XML) which is the technology MS now recommends to use within VS/MSBuild/TFSBuild environment to crate MSIs.
It is relatively easy to setup and integrate within your VS Solutions. It uses XML based files to describe your MSIs and uses these files to create your MSIs when you compile.
I would start by downloading Wix from http://wix.codeplex.com/
Once installed you would be able to use the VS2010 integration of Wix based projects to create MSIs. To get started quickly simply add a new Wix project to your solution and reference the projects whose output you wish to combine into an MSI. Next you can run a tool called "Heat" which is included with Wix toolkit to generate the XML files by scanning your projects.
Once you have these XML files, add them to your Wix project and compile.