Does anybody know how to write a command line for msbuild that would publish one single file to the file system providing that i have that file? So i do not want to deploy on build or any of that. Just as if i would right click on the file and select publish from within Visual Studio.
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I am trying to understand why is my WindowsForm app publish behaving differently, when done via command line and via Visual Studio's Publish.
The differences are:
In my command line publish, a copy of the .exe is placed in the top-directory publish folder, while it is not there, when published via VS
In my command line publish, the .application file is missing in the [Application Files] folder, while it is there when published via VS
A screen shot illustrating the exposed above:
Anyone has any idea why does this happen ? I have tried playing with the publish settings, but still without success.
Below is what my command line statement looks like (ran via Jenkins):
Explanation on specific differences between my click once publish when done via command line and from Visual Studio
That because some features are done by Visual-Studio and not by the MSBuild command line. So the click-once-deployment behaves differently when it's executed from the command-line.
When you publish via command line, only Project.exe and Setup.exe are copied to the deployment folder. You can switch the deployment folder by property PublishDir:
msbuild "ProjectName.csproj" /target:publish /p:Configuration=Release;PublishDir=D:\TestPublishFolder
When you publish from Visual Studio, Visual Studio will do some more features, including Application Files folder and .application file into deployment folder.
If you want to have the same publish result as Visual Studio when you publish via command line, you can custom target to achieve it.
See ApplicationFiles folder missing when ClickOnce publish with command line for more detailed info.
Hope this helps.
I am trying to write a script where automatically build in 30+ Visual Studio 2010 (.sln) through PowerShell script using Msbuild command line.
I am able to build the build the modules, but I have some dependency and specific project setting for all 30+ modules. Project properties for all 30+ modules are same. So I want to pass all the project properties once in the script to set for all modules for building automatically.
But,
I am not able to pass all the project setting where as only 3 parameters I am able to pass such /t:build /p:configuration:Debug /p:TargetPaltform=x86.
Issue: I want to pass all project properties as arguments for msbuild in my pwoershell script.
Could you please provide some syntax or idea how can I pass more project properties parameters as command line?
Example Parameters List:
Output Directory
Intermediate Directory
Include Directories
Library Directories
Output File and sub sections. etc.
I do have few config files and dll files that are needed in order to run the final product and I want to instruct visual studio build to pick them up.
So far it was easy to add them to the project but I wasn't able to identify the correct mix of properties that I need to setup for these files, in order to get the files inside the bin directory (target).
Note: the term deploy here doed not refer to the after build deployment, that would be a custom task anyway.
So far I see these options:
Excluded from Build: No
Content: Yes
Item Type: contains a list of ~20 options but none of them sounds like something that would work. I already tried most of them.
Select the project that requires the configuration file and right click on it and then select Properties.
Go to the Build Events tab and type in the Post-Build event command line something like the following
copy pathfiletocopy $(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)
now you could check the Copy Only on Successful Build option.
Of course you need to adapt the command line to your liking.
You can also press the button Edit Post-build and see a list of predefined macros that refers to specific informations related to your projects and solution. You could also insert other CMD shell commands like IF $(ConfigurationName) == "Release" to execute commands only when you compile for release instead of debug (for example running an obfuscator)
I am using Visual Studio Express 2012. Where is the location of the log file? I have searched in the folder where my solution and projects are stored, but cannot find any .log file.
This is the configuration for logging:
Log file from Visual Studio is only supported for C++ projects. You just have to work with the output window for others.
See this similar thread: VS2010: minimal build log in output and detailed log in log file
And in case you happen to do this for a C++ project, the file is at:
... build log in the intermediate files directory
... The path and name of the build log is represented by the MSBuild macro
expression, $(IntDir)\$(MSBuildProjectName).log.
Use build output instead of logging to file. Instead of copy/paste, simply click somewhere in the output and press CTRL + S to save. Visual Studio will prompt you for a location (tested with Visual Studio 2017, but I'm assuming this works in earlier versions too).
The msdn documentation is pretty clear about this (And you ain't gonna like it!):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj651643.aspx
Where it says:
To create a build log file for a managed-code project On the menu bar,
choose Build, Build Solution.
In the Output window, highlight the
information from the build, and then copy it to the Clipboard.
Open a
text editor, such as Notepad, paste the information into the file, and
then save it.
While it's true that VS doesn't allow this directly, it is still possible to build with MSBuild "inside" VS2015 and get both the build window output and the log file, as follows: (Arguably this is a bit of a hack.)
In your VS Managed solution, add a new project (Let's call it 'Make').
a. The project type you want is Visual C++/NMake project.
Define the MSBuild commands you need on the command line (see below).
Change the solution configuration to build the NMake project instead of the normal managed projects.
This will create a project that has Build, Rebuild, and Clean command lines where you can execute MSBuild directly. For example:
Rebuild: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Clean,Build
Build: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Build
Clean: MSBuild.exe /ds /v:diag /property:Configuration=Debug ..\BuildTest\BuildTest.csproj /t:Clean
You can also specify multiple MSBuild.EXE command lines in order to build multiple projects. For the usual build-the-entire-solution outcome you can target only the final end assemblies and let the dependency graph generate the individual targets.
This will produce a .log file, where NAME is the name of the NMake project you used. In the example above, the log would be make.log.
A working example is available on GitHub:
https://github.com/bitblitz/VS_MsbuildExample
(Tested with VS2015)
Note that building individual projects directly will still build with the normal VS behavior, but you can build the full solution inside VS and get the build logs.
I have set my Visual Studio to start Nunit as an external program to run all the tests written in a module.
Now what I am trying to do is to create a batch file which will call Myproj.exe. What I am expecting is that it will run Nunit as I have set it to run an external program and execute all my tests in nunit.exe, but when I run that batch file it starts running from Visual Studio instead of opening NUnit.
Can any one please give me a clear idea as how to accomplish it?
I am too much stuck.
Now I am trying to run the following commands in shell
nunit-x86.exe
Can you please tell how should I load my visualbasic project file (exe) here and then run all the tests from here
as unable to execute following command
nunit nunit.tests.vbproj /config:release
You can make NUnit start everytime you debug your "NUnit tests".
You can attach the debugger in Visual Studio Express doing it that way.
If you use a "full version" of VS do it that way:
Note that if you’re using the full and
not the express version of Visual
Studio 2005, you can do this by
opening up the project’s properties,
and in the Debug tab select Start
External Program: and navigate to the
NUnit executable, and set
YourCompanyname.YourProject.Test.dll as the
Command Line Arguments.
I got that ideas from this tutorial(Page 4/5) and love it.
You can also run NUnit after every successful build in Visual Studio with a Post-Build Event.
In VS2005, right-click on the project that has your tests and select Properties. Then on the Build Events tab, in the "Post-build event command line", put this* to use the console:
nunit-console /xml:$(ProjectName).xml $(TargetPath)
or this to use the GUI::
nunit $(TargetPath) /run
In "Run the post-build event:", leave the default: "On successful build"
If you use the GUI, know that your build will appear to be hung up until you close the GUI app.
*NOTE: The nunit console command line docs say "By default the nunit-console program is not added to your path."
you can just shell nunit.exe with the command line to your assembly to run tests in.
You can load nUnit.exe (nUnit-Console.exe for command line execution) using external tool features in Visual studio. Once you add the command via external tools feature (as explained in this blog), you can use it for any project to execute the tests. (Other is to add through project properties but that needs to be done for every project). Also in the arguments you can pass /include or /exclude to include or exclude categories of the tests.
The advantage of this method is you need not worry about giving path to DLL file and it works for any project you are on and gets executed with few clicks