MSBuild Team Blog

"Coding ... the boring bit between builds"

/p property values are immutable - (sort of)....

Hello there - sorry for the long absence, but we're back and hopefully I'll keep this going again....

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 10/05/2006

Hotfix is Now Available for Warning C4945

If you've been reading our forums you may have seen the long-running thread regarding warning C4945...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 07/10/2006

See what Matt Lee of XBox Game Technology Group has to say about MSBuild / XNA Build

Go check out this really awesome Ars Technica Interview of Matt Lee from the XBox Game Technology...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 06/14/2006

A New Tool For Visually Editing Build Process

Eugene sent us mail today to let us know that his company has released a neato little freeware tool...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 06/06/2006

InfoWorld picks up on MSBee, and a few other goodies....

InfoWorld picks up on some of the things we have done recently, and talks about MSBee, among other...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 05/30/2006

Batching Brainteaser Explained

So, as some of you pointed out, the batching brainteaser does print out the "intersection" of GroupA...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 05/30/2006

What Does This MSBuild Snippet Do?

It's been a while since we've had a little quiz on MSBuild. Over the last couple of days the MSBuild...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 05/18/2006

MSBuild Extras - Toolkit for .NET 1.1 ships!

It's been a little while (understatement!) since we've blogged something, but today we've got a good...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 05/17/2006

How To: Remove the Up-To-Date Check From the AssemblyInfoTask

Every couple of weeks I get mail from someone who is using the AssemblyInfoTask on a build machine...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/28/2006

Beta 2 of the MSBuild Toolkit for .NET Framework v1.1 is Out!

Craig just announced over on his blog that Beta 2 is available. New features in this release...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/24/2006

New Feature Feedback Request: /IgnoreProjectExtensions - A new command-line switch

I've been in a cave just getting things done toward our Orcas release. But there's not much a...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/23/2006

What Does MSBuild Have to do With The Future of Game Development?

Today the folks in our game studios team (XNA) used the Game Developer's Conference to roll out the...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/20/2006

How To: Bypass Post-Build Steps in a Build Lab Environment

(Can you tell I'm going through my folder of interesting MSBuild questions today?) Here's another...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/10/2006

Why Doesn't Delete Take Wildcards?

Here's another question from our internal conversion discussion alias that came through last week:...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/09/2006

How To: Distribute Your Custom Task and .Targets file

We've had variations of the same question on how to distribute tasks come through both internal and...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/09/2006

MSBuild.GlobalEngine vs "new Engine()": What's the Difference?

Earlier this week we got the following question from one of our VSIP partners: What is the...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/08/2006

How To: Exclude Multiple Files From a Wildcard

We got the following question on our internal conversion discussion alias today: Is there a way to...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 03/08/2006

Wildcard Expansion in Project Files

We got a question today on our internal discussion alias about the behaviour of wildcard expansions...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/22/2006

MSBuild Extras - Toolkit for .NET 1.1 (beta 1) is Out!

The folks in our customer experience team have posted the first public beta of MSBuild Extras -...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/10/2006

How To: Add Custom Process at Specific Points During Build (Method #2)

Back in November I wrote about a quick-and-dirty way to add custom build process into the standard...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/10/2006

HOW TO: Writing Custom Tasks - Part II - Types and Task Parameters

In Part I of the series on writing custom tasks, I covered the basic mechanics behind implementing...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/02/2006

Part 2 of the Series on Writing Tasks Comes Out Tomorrow!

Faisal's started a series on writing custom tasks, and just sent me an IM about how excited he is...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/01/2006

Sprint 12 review

This morning we had our review of work done during Sprint 12. As you hopefully recall we run two...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 02/01/2006

Answer to the Batching Brainteaser

Earlier this week I posted a little batching brainteaser from our internal team discussion list. If...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/27/2006

You Know You've Hit The Big Time When...

... your classes show up on the .NET Framework class diagram poster. If you buy a copy of Visual...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/26/2006

How To: Use the AssemblyInfoTask With ASP.NET Web Deployment Projects

About once a week we get a question from someone who wants to know how to set the assembly version...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/26/2006

How To: Obtain Initial Property Values in a Logger

We got a question on our MSBuild Feedback alias today that went something like this: How do I obtain...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/25/2006

A Little Batching Brainteaser

Every so often as we work through converting the Visual Studio builds over to MSBuild we stumble...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/24/2006

Why Do We Support Unqualified Metadata?

We got the following question on the MSBuild Discussion alias last week: I’m not sure why MSBuild...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/24/2006

How To: Implementing Custom Tasks - Part I

While MSBuild is all about build customization,we never really blogged about what is involved in...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/21/2006

Post Summary: MSBuild in Visual Studio

For easy reference here's a list of all the MSBuild in Visual Studio posts we ran over the last...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/06/2006

How To: Use the AssemblyInfoTask With Source Code Control

Several people have written our feedback alias with problems using the AssemblyInfoTask when the...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/05/2006

Platform Sprint 11

The new year got off to a good start for us with the MSBuild Platform Sprint 11 Backlog selection...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/05/2006

How To: Retrieve the AssemblyVersion using AssemblyInfoTask

We got a great question at msbuild@microsoft.com last week: What is the preferred method to retrieve...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/04/2006

MSBuild in Visual Studio Part 14: Managing Project Files

One last little interesting piece of information on how Visual Studio uses MSBuild relates to the...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/04/2006

A Note on Pair Programming

Hi All - My colleague Neil Enns wanted me to drop a note about the fact that we've been...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/04/2006

Well Known Limitation: Dynamic items and properties not emitted until target execution completes

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi has written about a restriction that he ran into when using CreateProperty and...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/02/2006

MSBee CTP released

Craig points out that the first CTP for MSBee went out early adopters last week. If you are...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 01/02/2006

See you in the new year!

If you're wondering why the blog's been so quiet it's because pretty much all the MSBuild team is...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 12/19/2005

Sprint 10 Review

Today we're holding our Sprint 10 review. If you recall we do sprints for both dogfooding support...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 12/09/2005

How To: Return Additional Information on Outputs from a Project

We got a great question today from an internal team at Microsoft that is working on some custom...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 12/08/2005

AssemblyInfoTask Version 1.0.51130.0 is now available!

I just posted an updated version of the AssemblyInfoTask and its source code to our GotDotNet user...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 12/07/2005

Craig's On-Going MSBee Discussions

Craig is a developer in our customer experience team who is working on the v1.1 build support in...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 12/07/2005

How To: Specify Long Command Lines to MSBuild

Sometimes when using MSBuild.exe the command lines can get pretty darn long and hard to manage. This...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/29/2005

Sprint 10 Backlog Items

My bad for not getting this up sooner. We've actually been going on Sprint 10 for the last two...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/28/2005

How To: Perform Nightly Builds with Team Foundation Server

Edit: Ok, after talking with Khushboo and given Niels's comment, it's clear that the article I...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/28/2005

How To: Insert Custom Process at Specific Points During Build

Today Kieran, Faisal, and I met with one of our partners to give them an introduction to MSBuild....

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/23/2005

MSBuild in Visual Studio Part 13: The Three Custom Loggers

We’re written in the past about how to write custom loggers, and you probably won’t be surprised to...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/22/2005

MSBuild in Visual Studio Part 12: Compiling Inside Visual Studio

We’ve touched briefly on how the Compile target is used by Visual Studio, but only on how it relates...

Author: Mike Fourie Date: 11/19/2005

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