有没有一种方法可以在IDE中的解决方案中执行所有项目的目标（无命令行）？

Question

Please hear me out as this question has been modified extensively.

I have an msbuild target that I want to execute after each project in my solution is built from the IDE. I can easily do this by creating an msbuild replica of my solution, but you can't use it within visual studio. You can go through the projects properies as specify an after build process, but this is quite tedious, especially if you have more than 2 projects.

Is there a better way to execute a target for all projects in a solution within the IDE? I just can't believe that VS2010 doesn't give you an easier option.

BTW, does VS 2012 Beta support a full MsBuild file instead of the brain dead solution file?

Answer 1

What I get from your question is that you've extended the build process and then created a 'shadow' msbuild file that does what the solution file normally ends up doing during build. As you are aware, solution files are a rather unfortunate visual studio only concept. That issue is nearly impossible to work around.

The idiomatic approach to this problem is leave the solution file alone and modify the individual .csproj files to include the custom build steps that each project would need to be completed according to your process. NuGet does this when you use it, so does NotifyPropertyWeaver. (NuGet works around the solution issue by introducing a '$(SolutionDir)' property)

As an aside, I'm not sure how valuable 'building an installer' is to the individual developer on your team and including in the build seems like it adds friction rather than removes it.

If this is for a custom build server, there's no need to use the solution file at all if you don't mind keeping the two in sync and I'd wholeheartedly recommend that approach.

Answer 2

You can debug msbuild using the visual studio IDE. There is an undocumented registry switch to enable. See this thorough msdn article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/07/06/debugging-msbuild-script-with-visual-studio.aspx