Why create a build file for a Visual Studio
Solution?
A build file automates the process of building, testing, analyzing, packaging, & deploying your project. Build files can be used to give you a single click solution to perform mundane tasks in a consistent way.
It saves you time by automating all the tedious steps necessary to prepare your project for testing or deploying. It reduces risk because you can confidently repeat the process, there's no change you will forgot to rename a file or change to release mode etc etc.
OK but How?
Creating a build file for the first time can be a little tricky so I have prepared a quick tutorial on creating a simple msbuild file for compiling your solution. Just follow the steps below and let me know if you have any issues.
1) Folder Structure
Once we start running builds of our project we need a place to store the results. We may also need extra tools for our build process and of course we need a place for our new build file.
Below is a the folder structure I will be using for this introduction. It allows us to keep all of the build files / folders out of our source tree.
Project Root:/
/Build – result of the build will be placed in here
/Source – all source code (& libraries) for the project
/Tools – collection of tools used for the build process
/build.bat – simple 'double click to build' ms dos batch file
/build.proj– our build file for msbuild, this is where we define the steps for our build process
2) Creating the Batch File
Create a new blank file called build.bat in the root directory of your project. This will be a simple ms dos batch file to kick off our build script. Simple copy the contents below into the batch file.
REM dont remove this line
"%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" /nologo build.proj %*
Make sure you leave the first line intact, otherwise you may run into problems because of the encoding used to save the file. If you have issues with encoding then you may need to open the file using a specific encoding (850) see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dxfdkfke(VS.80).aspx.
The batch file simply calls msbuild.exe and passes in our build.proj file. The %* argument passes any command line arguments supplied to the batch file into the msbuild.exe command. This allows us to specify a target at the command prompt like this: build /t:clean
4) Creating the Build File
Read more: Marks asp.net / mvc blog
Solution?
A build file automates the process of building, testing, analyzing, packaging, & deploying your project. Build files can be used to give you a single click solution to perform mundane tasks in a consistent way.
It saves you time by automating all the tedious steps necessary to prepare your project for testing or deploying. It reduces risk because you can confidently repeat the process, there's no change you will forgot to rename a file or change to release mode etc etc.
OK but How?
Creating a build file for the first time can be a little tricky so I have prepared a quick tutorial on creating a simple msbuild file for compiling your solution. Just follow the steps below and let me know if you have any issues.
1) Folder Structure
Once we start running builds of our project we need a place to store the results. We may also need extra tools for our build process and of course we need a place for our new build file.
Below is a the folder structure I will be using for this introduction. It allows us to keep all of the build files / folders out of our source tree.
Project Root:/
/Build – result of the build will be placed in here
/Source – all source code (& libraries) for the project
/Tools – collection of tools used for the build process
/build.bat – simple 'double click to build' ms dos batch file
/build.proj– our build file for msbuild, this is where we define the steps for our build process
2) Creating the Batch File
Create a new blank file called build.bat in the root directory of your project. This will be a simple ms dos batch file to kick off our build script. Simple copy the contents below into the batch file.
REM dont remove this line
"%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" /nologo build.proj %*
Make sure you leave the first line intact, otherwise you may run into problems because of the encoding used to save the file. If you have issues with encoding then you may need to open the file using a specific encoding (850) see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dxfdkfke(VS.80).aspx.
The batch file simply calls msbuild.exe and passes in our build.proj file. The %* argument passes any command line arguments supplied to the batch file into the msbuild.exe command. This allows us to specify a target at the command prompt like this: build /t:clean
4) Creating the Build File
Read more: Marks asp.net / mvc blog