MSBuild: OutputPath directory is empty - deployment

I want to deploy my ASP.NET MVC site and have the following script.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<Import Project="..\MyProjName\MyProjName.csproj"/>
<PropertyGroup>
<NewInstallDir>C:\DeployFolder\</NewInstallDir>
<BinDir>$(NewInstallDir)bin\</BinDir>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="Build">
<MSBuild Projects="..\MySlnName.sln"
Properties="Configuration=Release;Platform=Any CPU;OutputPath=$(BinDir)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(Content->'..\MyProjName\%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')"
DestinationFiles="#(Content->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(None->'..\MyProjName\%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')"
DestinationFiles="#(None->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)%(FileName)%(Extension)')" />
<MakeDir Directories="#(Folder->'$(NewInstallDir)%(RelativeDir)')" />
</Target>
</Project>
Main idea.
I copied binary to C:\DeployFolder (take structure of folder from sources). I build my dll to C:\DeployFolder\Bin (I don't have this folder in sources folder so I need separately copy this).
I run my script - all works instead of copy DLLs to OutputPath. Same scripts works for other asp.net mvc project. I have no idea what is wrong in this case.
I complete this issue with workaround but I would like to know what is wrong with this script.

The first thing I'd try is to replace your use of the deprecated $(OutputPath) with $(OutDir). From when I've seen this error, 9 times out of 10 it is due to a mismatch between the Platform/Configuration requested and how a particular project is actually defined. Take care to keep track of the discrepency between "Any CPU" (with a space) preferred by solution files and "AnyCPU" actually used inside project files for $(Platform). Some project wizards only set up an "x86" Platform or otherwise omit "AnyCPU" which can cause the OutputPath to be empty.
Beyond that, the approach of importing a project file and then building a solution (presumbably that includes the very same project" is a bit off center. Consider making the deployment changes you desire within the project file itself, through an import. You can either wire into the existing build targets at the right place, or perhaps add an additional target.

Related

Output Directory of native dll bundled with NuGet

I am trying to build a NuGet package that includes native DLLs which are to be placed in the output folder when a project uses the package. I have tried to use the several suggestions from this question, but I am always running in the same problem.
My current NuGet package layout is like this:
\build
packageId.targets
file1.dll
file2.dll
\lib
\netstandard1.4
assembly.dll
The contents of packageId.targets is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<ItemGroup>
<NativeLibs Include="$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)\*.dll"/>
<None Include="#(NativeLibs)" Link="$(RecursiveDir)$(Filename)$(Extension)">
<CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
</None>
</ItemGroup>
</Project>
This should, according to the answers of the other questions, lead to my DLLs being placed in the bin\Debug directory of the project using the package. However, they are not. Instead, they are placed in bin\Debug\packages\packageId\build.
Now I have experimented a lot, and I noticed more and more strange behavior which I cannot make any sense of:
If I move the DLLs to the root of the NuGet package (like one answer suggests) and change the .targets file accordingly, they are not copied at all. There also is no error message.
If I change the .targets file to only reference file1.dll in both Include= and Link=, both files get copied anyway.
So I wondered if some policy just ignores the .targets file and copies whatever is in build to that path in the output folder, but when I remove the .targets file, the DLL files will not get copied anymore.
Now I understand even less what's happening.
What do I need to change to get the DLLs copied right into bin\Debug?
The new way to handle runtime-specific assents in NuGet is to use the runtimes folder to place native assets:
\lib
\netstandard2.0
ManagedWrapper.dll
\runtimes
\win-x86
\native
NativeThing.dll
\win-x64
\native
NativeThing.dll
\linux-x64
\native
libNativeThing.so
\osx-x64
\native
libNativeThing.dylib
If the package is consumed from a .NET Framework project, you may need to add a reference to the Microsoft.NETCore.Platforms package wich provides the runtime graph (runtimes.json) for NuGet to provide proper RID mappings if you don't use base RIDs (e.g. win10-x64 falls back to win-x64 resources).

How do you upgrade the *.props included in a NuGet package?

I'm working on an internal NuGet package that adds a pre-build event.
It does this by specifying a build folder containing a MyPackage.props file per the documentation.
Here is the contents of the props file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="12.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>Some commands go here</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
If the project has never had a pre-build event, the event is created. However, if there is an existing PerBuildEvent element in the csproj file, the new value does not get populated. I can get it to work if I open up the csproj file and manually delete the appropriate PropertyGroupElement:
<PropertyGroup>
<PreBuildEvent>Some command line stuff</PreBuildEvent>
</PropertyGroup>
However, I have to delete if from there, as just deleting the contents of the pre-build event in the UI does not allow the new value to be written.
I want to use the convention based method over doing this in install.ps1 because the documentation specifies:
[NuGet 3.x] This script will not be executed in projects managed by project.json
...and (I left this part out before) is there a way to do this when there is no csproj file?
What's going on?
I would suggest you do not use a prebuild event in your .props since I would expect that you do not want to overwrite an existing one in the project.
Instead you could look at using another target so that your logic runs before the build by using the BeforeTargets:
<Target Name="MyBeforeBuild" BeforeTargets="Build">
<Message Text="### MyBeforeBuild ###" Importance="high" />
</Target>
You may also want to look at using the DependsOnTargets attribute if you need your pre-build event to run after some other target.
<Target Name="MyTarget" DependsOnTargets="$(CoreCompileDependsOn)">
</Target>

Eclipse: Automatically run Ant scripts in sequent order

I am using Eclipse's Ant view to run my build files. I have to run a couple of files in a specific order and I wonder whether there is any possibility to automate this (I'm sure there is...). However, they need to run subsequently, i.e. script two may not start until script one finished successfully. Most of my Ant scripts trigger Maven commands.
Is there any Eclipse plugin or feature that can assist me in running my Ant files automatically? Maybe even shutdown and restart my Java EE server before and after building?
I'd like to double-click just once and have my toolchain work, while I... get myself another cup of coffee.
I can think of two options:
Write a wrapper Ant script/target that calls the others in the desired order. It's been a number of years since I wrote any Ant but I remember doing that, probably using the <ant> task. It might make sense to simply define a target that has dependencies/prerequisites in the right sequence (in conjunction with the <import> task to pull in the separate buildfiles). Here is a discussion about the difference between these two approaches.
Use Eclipse's External Tool feature to invoke a batch/shell script that calls each Ant target.
This is what I finally came up with:
<project default="all" basedir=".." name="Build all projects">
<property name="folder.project.a" value="MyProjectA" />
<property name="folder.project.b" value="MyOtherProjectB" />
<!-- Target to build all projects -->
<target name="all" depends="projectA, projectB" />
<target name="projectA">
<echo>Building project A.</echo>
<ant antfile="${folder.project.a}/my_build_file.xml" />
</target>
<target name="projectB">
<echo>Building project B.</echo>
<ant antfile="${folder.project.b}/my_other_build_file.xml" />
</target>
</project>

Is it possible to create an ant-build file for a wikitext project automatically in eclipse?

I have a few hundred textile files in my eclipse project and I have written an ant-build xml file for creating the output html files. This works fine normally. However, every time I add some .textile files to the project, I also have to edit the projectBuilder.xml file manually if the the output has to be generated.
Is there a way in eclipse where I can generate the projectBuilder.xml file automatically? i.e. Lets say, I add a new folder with some 50 subfolders having .textile files inside them, I want eclipse to detect this and add those paths to the build file.
Following is part of the build file for illustration purpose:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="ALM" default="generate-html">
<property name="wikitext.standalone" value="jar" />
<path id="wikitext.classpath">
<fileset dir="${wikitext.standalone}">
<include name="org.eclipse.mylyn.wikitext.*core*.jar" />
</fileset>
</path>
<taskdef classpathref="wikitext.classpath" resource="org/eclipse/mylyn/wikitext/core/util/anttask/tasks.properties" />
<target name="generate-html" description="Generate HTML from textile source">
<wikitext-to-html markupLanguage="Textile">
<fileset dir="${basedir}/..">
<include name="Docu/*.textile" />
<include name="Add-Ons/*.textile" />
<include name="uC1/asv/ASD/doc/*.textile" />
I'm not sure, which of these 2 problems you have.
To automate the transformation process, select Project->Properties->Builder. Add an Ant builder and give it the Ant script that you already have. This leads to running your script on every change in the project (like the normal Java compiler). If you want to run the Ant script only when your textile files change, then have a look at the last tab "Build options" when configuring that builder, there you can restrict it to a "working set of relevant resources".
To dynamically get the list of directories, there are multiple ant tasks available and it might depend on your project layout what to use: Using fileset you could just find all textile files and then use the fileset contents for the generation: Find all directories in which a file exists, such that the file contains a search string Or if the directory structure very plain, then you can just iterate it with foreach: Ant: How do I interate over all subfolders and perform a task in ant.

MSBuild project deploy to local folder with config transformed

I'm having trouble trying to find the right way to use MSBuild to build a web project and output the project with only deployable files (i.e. no .cs, .csproj, .Debug.config etc.), but published to a local folder that I can then FTP, RoboCopy, (or whatever) to a secondary location.
The published output must have the Web.config file pre-transformed as per the specified configuration and the transformation config files (e.g. Web.Debug.config) not included in the output. I don't need any fancy publishing to IIS, database deployment or anything like that, I just want clean file system output that I can then test. Note that this cannot be done using visual tools as I want to run it as part of an automated build process.
I can generate a web deployment package, but I can't get WebDeploy to work because it doesn't seem to handle quoted command line options anymore (seems to be some kind of bug) and the directory structure has spaces, so I was hoping to accomplish the whole task using MSBuild, seeing as MSBuild seems to have native capacity to transform the config file (TransformXml), which is the only real bit of proper deployment functionality I'd be using.
Got it figured out eventually. The following build script does the trick:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<UsingTask TaskName="TransformXml" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\Web\Microsoft.Web.Publishing.Tasks.dll"/>
<PropertyGroup>
<OutputDir>obj\website-output</OutputDir>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="PrepareDeploy">
<ItemGroup>
<DeployableFiles Include="App_Code/**/*.*;App_Data/**/*.*;Areas/**/Views/**/*.*;bin/**/*.*;Views/**/*.*;*.aspx;*.asax;*.html;*.htm;sitemap.xml;*.ico;*.png" Exclude="App_Data/**/*.log" />
</ItemGroup>
<RemoveDir ContinueOnError="true" Directories="$(OutputDir)" />
<MSBuild Projects="Website.csproj" />
<MakeDir ContinueOnError="true" Directories="$(OutputDir)" />
<Copy SourceFiles="#(DeployableFiles)" DestinationFiles="#(DeployableFiles->'$(OutputDir)\%(RelativeDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)')" />
<TransformXml Source="Web.config" Transform="Web.$(Configuration).config" Destination="$(OutputDir)\web.config" />
</Target>
</Project>