Automatically fixing ProjectReference Include paths before building a csproj file - visual-studio

Question

I have a VS 2010 solution with a number of projects in it.
Projects reference other projects within the solution.
I have noticed that when I have a wrong project reference path in a csproj file like this:
<ProjectReference Include="..\..\..\..\WrongFolder\OtherProject.csproj">
<Project>{CD795AA6-9DC4-4451-A8BA-29BACF847AAC}</Project>
<Name>OtherProject</Name>
</ProjectReference>
Visual studio would fix this on opening the solution:
<ProjectReference Include="..\..\..\..\RightFolder\OtherProject.csproj">
<Project>{CD795AA6-9DC4-4451-A8BA-29BACF847AAC}</Project>
<Name>OtherProject</Name>
</ProjectReference>
I suppose it uses the GUID from the Project element to uniquely identify the project within the solution which allows it to fix the path.
MSBuild on the other hand doesn't seem to fix this path and building the solution fails.
Is there a way to make MSBuild fix the path or do it as a pre-build step with some other tool or command so that the solution builds correctly?
Thanks!

Answer 1

This is part of the VisualStudio functionality. But you can call a tool to solve the references before the build. Here is a draft code that you can elaborate:
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Xml;
namespace FixProjectReferences
{
class Program
{
// License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
// Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
// Author: Marlos Fabris
// Summary: Updates the project references in csproj.
// Param:
// args[0] = Main project (c:\mainProject.csproj)
// args[1] = Folder to scan other projects (c:\other)
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string mainProject = args[0];
string folder = args[1];
FileInfo mainPrjInfo = new FileInfo(mainProject);
string currentDir = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
// Lists all project files in the directory specified
// and scans the GUID's.
DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(folder);
FileInfo[] projects = info.GetFiles("*.csproj",
SearchOption.AllDirectories);
Dictionary<Guid, string> prjGuids = new Dictionary<Guid, string>();
foreach (var project in projects)
{
if (project.FullName == mainPrjInfo.FullName)
continue;
Regex regex = new Regex("<ProjectGuid>(\\{.*?\\})</ProjectGuid>");
Match match = regex.Match(File.ReadAllText(project.FullName));
string guid = match.Groups[1].Value;
prjGuids.Add(new Guid(guid), project.FullName);
}
// Loads the main project and verifies if the references are valid.
// If not, updates with the correct ones from the list
// previously generated.
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(mainPrjInfo.FullName);
XmlNamespaceManager ns = new XmlNamespaceManager(doc.NameTable);
ns.AddNamespace("ns",
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003");
var nodes = doc.SelectNodes("//ns:ProjectReference", ns);
foreach (XmlNode node in nodes)
{
string referencePath = node.Attributes["Include"].Value;
string path = Path.Combine(mainPrjInfo.Directory.FullName,
referencePath);
if (File.Exists(path))
continue;
string projectGuid = node.SelectSingleNode("./ns:Project",
ns).InnerText;
Guid tempGuid = new Guid(projectGuid);
if (prjGuids.ContainsKey(tempGuid))
{
node.Attributes["Include"].Value = prjGuids[tempGuid];
}
}
doc.Save(mainPrjInfo.FullName);
}
}
}