On our current project we are using MSBuild to build our application. This is my first time using MSBuild other than just tinkering and I have found it…. challenging to say the least. A lot of my challenges are lack of knowledge but the other half is the language itself.

The most recent challenge I wanted to write about was calling a target multiple times. Our scenario is this: We have to generate a batch file for each environment we are going to install in with environment specific settings. The issue I had was that for each environment we had that we were copying and pasting the steps and changing values for each environments. While this worked, as the number of environments grew the size of the build task grew and got harder to modify as requirements changed.

Ideally what we would have is a task that would generate a batch file based on a set of parameters that we could just call out to so I built this:

   <Target Name=”BuildBatchFile “>
    <Copy SourceFiles=”install.bat”
                 DestinationFiles=”MyApp.Setup\Release\install.$(BATCHENV).bat”
                 ContinueOnError=”false” 
                 SkipUnchangedFiles=”false” />
    <FileUpdate Files=”MyApp.Setup\Release\install.$(BATCHENV).bat”
                           Regex=”{ENV}”
                           ReplacementText=”$(ENV)” />
    <FileUpdate Files=”MyApp.Setup\Release\install.$(BATCHENV).bat”
                           Regex=”{VDIR}”
                           ReplacementText=”$(VDIR)” />
    <FileUpdate Files=”MyApp.Setup\Release\install.$(BATCHENV).bat”
                           Regex=”{INSTALLDIR}”
                           ReplacementText=”$(INSTALLDIR)” />
  </Target>

So this copies my template install.bat to install.[ENVIRONMENT[.bat and then does all the string replacements on it.

The issue is how to invoke this task with different sets of data. My first thought was this:

<CallTarget Targets=”BuildConfigFile” />

Unfortunately, there is no way to pass parameters to a target. The only way to do that is to call MSBuild and set the parameters passed to MSBuild (this does feel wrong but I am not sure of a better way to do it so far)

<Target Name=”BuildDeploymentPackage”>
    <MSBuild Projects=”$(MSBuildProjectFile)”
                      Targets=”BuildBatchFile “  
                      Properties=”BATCHENV=ALPHA;ENV=ALPHA;VDIR=PASIPrep;INSTALLDIR=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp;” />
    <MSBuild Projects=”$(MSBuildProjectFile)”
                       Targets=”BuildBatchFile ”
                        Properties=”BATCHENV=SYST;ENV=SYST;VDIR=MyApp;INSTALLDIR=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp;” />
    <MSBuild Projects=”$(MSBuildProjectFile)”
                       Targets=”BuildBatchFile “ 
                       Properties=”BATCHENV=TRAINING;ENV=TEST;VDIR=MyApp;INSTALLDIR=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyApp.TEST;” />
  </Target>

The above target calls MSBuild to call its own build file and run the BuildBatchFile target with a set of parameters.

Hope this helps (or someone shows me a better way to do it)!