R – How is the ExcludeFromBuild itemgroup supposed to work in Web Deployment Projects

asp.netmsbuildweb-deployment-project

I added an ItemGroup for ExcludeFromBuild items in the PreBuild target in my Web Deployment project:

<ItemGroup>
  <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Test\**\*.*" />
</ItemGroup>

After the build the assembly in the output still contains the compiled classes from the files in ~/Test. That's not what I expected.

Here is a snippet from Using Web Deployment Projects with Visual Studio 2005 on MSDN:

For example, by adding the following
section to a Web
Deployment project, you can exclude
the Test and Images folder from the
build process:
<ItemGroup>
 <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Test\**\*.*"/>
 <ExcludeFromBuild  Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Images\**\*.*"/>
</ItemGroup>
This is useful if you have test code
in the Web site project that should
not be included in the staging or
release builds.

Seems not work that way for me though. Am I missing something obvious?

Best Answer

Never mind, I have found the problem. The ExcludeFromBuild item group is evaluated in the _CopyBeforeBuild target, which is called before the BeforeBuild target.

Doh!

Related Solutions

C# – the best practice for “Copy Local” and with project references

In a previous project I worked with one big solution with project references and bumped into a performance problem as well. The solution was three fold:

Always set the Copy Local property to false and enforce this via a custom msbuild step
Set the output directory for each project to the same directory (preferably relative to $(SolutionDir)

The default cs targets that get shipped with the framework calculate the set of references to be copied to the output directory of the project currently being built. Since this requires calculating a transitive closure under the 'References' relation this can become VERY costly. My workaround for this was to redefine the GetCopyToOutputDirectoryItems target in a common targets file (eg. Common.targets ) that's imported in every project after the import of the Microsoft.CSharp.targets. Resulting in every project file to look like the following:

<Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    ... snip ...
  </ItemGroup>
  <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
  <Import Project="[relative path to Common.targets]" />
  <!-- To modify your build process, add your task inside one of the targets below and uncomment it. 
       Other similar extension points exist, see Microsoft.Common.targets.
  <Target Name="BeforeBuild">
  </Target>
  <Target Name="AfterBuild">
  </Target>
  -->
</Project>

This reduced our build time at a given time from a couple of hours (mostly due to memory constraints), to a couple of minutes.

The redefined GetCopyToOutputDirectoryItems can be created by copying the lines 2,438–2,450 and 2,474–2,524 from C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets into Common.targets.

For completeness the resulting target definition then becomes:

<!-- This is a modified version of the Microsoft.Common.targets
     version of this target it does not include transitively
     referenced projects. Since this leads to enormous memory
     consumption and is not needed since we use the single
     output directory strategy.
============================================================
                    GetCopyToOutputDirectoryItems

Get all project items that may need to be transferred to the
output directory.
============================================================ -->
<Target
    Name="GetCopyToOutputDirectoryItems"
    Outputs="@(AllItemsFullPathWithTargetPath)"
    DependsOnTargets="AssignTargetPaths;_SplitProjectReferencesByFileExistence">

    <!-- Get items from this project last so that they will be copied last. -->
    <CreateItem
        Include="@(ContentWithTargetPath->'%(FullPath)')"
        Condition="'%(ContentWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always' or '%(ContentWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"
            >
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="AllItemsFullPathWithTargetPath"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectoryAlways"
                Condition="'%(ContentWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always'"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectory"
                Condition="'%(ContentWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"/>
    </CreateItem>

    <CreateItem
        Include="@(_EmbeddedResourceWithTargetPath->'%(FullPath)')"
        Condition="'%(_EmbeddedResourceWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always' or '%(_EmbeddedResourceWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"
            >
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="AllItemsFullPathWithTargetPath"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectoryAlways"
                Condition="'%(_EmbeddedResourceWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always'"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectory"
                Condition="'%(_EmbeddedResourceWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"/>
    </CreateItem>

    <CreateItem
        Include="@(Compile->'%(FullPath)')"
        Condition="'%(Compile.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always' or '%(Compile.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'">
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_CompileItemsToCopy"/>
    </CreateItem>
    <AssignTargetPath Files="@(_CompileItemsToCopy)" RootFolder="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)">
        <Output TaskParameter="AssignedFiles" ItemName="_CompileItemsToCopyWithTargetPath" />
    </AssignTargetPath>
    <CreateItem Include="@(_CompileItemsToCopyWithTargetPath)">
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="AllItemsFullPathWithTargetPath"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectoryAlways"
                Condition="'%(_CompileItemsToCopyWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always'"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectory"
                Condition="'%(_CompileItemsToCopyWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"/>
    </CreateItem>

    <CreateItem
        Include="@(_NoneWithTargetPath->'%(FullPath)')"
        Condition="'%(_NoneWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always' or '%(_NoneWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"
            >
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="AllItemsFullPathWithTargetPath"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectoryAlways"
                Condition="'%(_NoneWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='Always'"/>
        <Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="_SourceItemsToCopyToOutputDirectory"
                Condition="'%(_NoneWithTargetPath.CopyToOutputDirectory)'=='PreserveNewest'"/>
    </CreateItem>
</Target>

With this workaround in place I found it workable to have as much as > 120 projects in one solution, this has the main benefit that the build order of the projects can still be determined by VS instead of doing that by hand by splitting up your solution.

ASP.NET Web Deployment Projects: getting rid of .compiled files

The .compile file comes from pre-compiling on deployment. So you basically have 3 options:

Keep the .compiled file
Don't pre-compile and deploy source code
Turn this in to a Web Application instead of a Web Site and compile as an assembly

I have run in to the same problem myself. I actually choose #1 in most cases when dealing with deployment of Web Sites, but on the rare occasion when I know I am going to have to maintain the site for an extended period of time, I take the time to upgrade it to a Web Application.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – the best practice for “Copy Local” and with project references

ASP.NET Web Deployment Projects: getting rid of .compiled files

Related Topic