C＃Visual Studio项目属性和MSBuild宏

Question

Why can't I use MSBuild macros in a C# Project's properties? These all work find in a CPP project.

For example:

• Create an empty C# console application
• Change the main method to take command line arguments
• Right click on the project in solution explorer and click properties
• Choose "Debug" on the left side
• In Command Line Argument's, enter: "$(SolutionDir)"
• Debug your program
• Notice that the argument is quite literally $(SolutionDir) rather than what it translates to.

I have the same problem with "Xml documentation file path" and other fields.

Answer 1

Why can't I use MSBuild macros in a C# Project's properties? These all work find in a CPP project.

This is because the way C# and CPP project introduce macros is not the same.

For C# project, it introduced by the .props , .targets files, for example, the Microsoft.CSharp.targets file. In your project file .csproj you will find following Import:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

For CPP project, it introduced by property sheets, you can get it from View -> Other Windows -> Property Manager , which is not supported by C# project.

The different:

You can use property sheets to create project configurations that can be applied to multiple projects since project settings that are defined in .vsprops files are inheritable , unlike project settings defined in Project Files (.vcproj files). Therefore, a project configuration defined in a .vcproj file can inherit project settings from one or more property sheets (.vsprops files) . For more information, see Property Inheritance.

That the reason why you can use MSBuild macros in a CPP Project's properties but not in C# project.

You can check following document for some more details:

Common macros for build commands and properties

Property Sheets (C++)

Hope this helps.