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MSBuild Tips & Tricks

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Kirill Osenkov edited this page Jul 5, 2018 · 8 revisions

MSBuild.exe /pp

MSBuild preprocessor. Pass /pp to the command line to create a single huge XML project file with all project imports inlined in the correct order. This is useful to investigate the ordering of evaluation and execution.

Example:

msbuild MyProject.csproj /pp:inlined.proj

MSBuild.exe /m

Parallel build. Many people still don't know that they can significantly speed up their builds by passing /m to MSBuild.exe.

MSBuild.exe /nr:false

Disable node reuse (/nodeReuse:false). Don't leave MSBuild.exe processes hanging around locking files after the build completes. See more details in MSBuild command line help (/?). See also MSBUILDDISABLENODEREUSE=1 below.

EnvironmentVariables

  • MSBUILDTARGETOUTPUTLOGGING=1 - set this to enable printing all target outputs to the log.
  • MSBUILDLOGTASKINPUTS=1 - log task inputs (not needed if there are any diagnostic loggers already).
  • MSBUILDEMITSOLUTION=1 - save the generated .proj file for the .sln that is used to build the solution.
  • MSBUILDENABLEALLPROPERTYFUNCTIONS=1 - enable additional property functions.
  • MSBUILDLOGVERBOSERARSEARCHRESULTS=1 - in ResolveAssemblyReference task, log verbose search results.
  • MSBUILDLOGCODETASKFACTORYOUTPUT=1 - dump generated code for task to a .txt file in the TEMP directory
  • MSBUILDDISABLENODEREUSE=1 - set this to not leave MSBuild processes behind (see /nr:false above, but the environment variable is useful to also set this for Visual Studio for example).
  • MSBUILDLOGASYNC=1 - enable asynchronous logging.

TreatAsLocalProperty

If MSBuild.exe is passed properties on the command line, such as /p:Platform=AnyCPU then this value overrides whatever assignments you have to that property inside property groups. For instance, <Platform>x86</Platform> will be ignored. To make sure your local assignment to properties overrides whatever they pass on the command line, add the following at the top of your MSBuild project file:

<Project TreatAsLocalProperty="Platform" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

This will make sure that your local assignments to the Platform property are respected. You can specify multiple properties in TreatAsLocalProperty separated by semicolon.

Visual Studio Background Builds

Set the TRACEDESIGNTIME=true environment variable to output design-time build logs to TEMP: read more here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jeremykuhne/2016/06/06/vs-background-builds

Visual Studio Design-time (IntelliSense) builds

Use this command-line to approximate what the design-time build does:

/t:CollectResolvedSDKReferencesDesignTime;DebugSymbolsProjectOutputGroup;CollectPackageReferences;ResolveComReferencesDesignTime;ContentFilesProjectOutputGroup;DocumentationProjectOutputGroupDependencies;SGenFilesOutputGroup;ResolveProjectReferencesDesignTime;SourceFilesProjectOutputGroup;DebugSymbolsProjectOutputGroupDependencies;SatelliteDllsProjectOutputGroup;BuiltProjectOutputGroup;SGenFilesOutputGroupDependencies;ResolveAssemblyReferencesDesignTime;CollectAnalyzersDesignTime;CollectSDKReferencesDesignTime;DocumentationProjectOutputGroup;PriFilesOutputGroup;BuiltProjectOutputGroupDependencies;ResolvePackageDependenciesDesignTime;SatelliteDllsProjectOutputGroupDependencies;SDKRedistOutputGroup;CompileDesignTime /p:SkipCompilerExecution=true /p:ProvideCommandLineArgs=true /p:BuildingInsideVisualStudio=true /p:DesignTimeBuild=true

Extend all builds (at system-wide level)

See https://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-tools/extending-msbuild, "Extending all builds" section. Also read about MSBuildUserExtensionsPath, CustomBeforeMicrosoftCommonProps, CustomBeforeMicrosoftCommonTargets, and CustomAfterMicrosoftCommonProps/CustomAfterMicrosoftCommonTargets.

Example: Create this file (Custom.props) in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\14.0\Microsoft.Common.targets\ImportAfter:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project ToolsVersion="14.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MyCustomProperty>Value!</MyCustomProperty>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

then build any project. It will have MyCustomProperty set to Value!

Diagnose WPF temporary assembly compilation issues

Set the property GenerateTemporaryTargetAssemblyDebuggingInformation on the GenerateTemporaryTargetAssembly task: https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#PresentationBuildTasks/BuildTasks/Microsoft/Build/Tasks/Windows/GenerateTemporaryTargetAssembly.cs,4571677f19ba0d24,references

If this is set, the .tmp_proj generated during XAML project build will not be deleted and will be available for inspection.

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