Windows – MSBuild “Debug” configuration not working in VS 2010 Beta 2

msbuildvisual studio 2010windows-desktop-gadgets

I'm trying to set up my environment for developing, debugging and deploying Windows Desktop Gadgets. I've hit a bit of a roadblock in my project, where I can't run a build on my gadget when the configuration is set to "Debug". If the configuration is set to "Release", the build goes through the following custom tasks:

Copy gadget contents to a seperate folder.
Minify/obfuscate the javascript files, removing comments and whitespace.
Package the files into a CAB file.
Sign the CAB file with a digital certificate.

This runs just fine, my "Debug" configuration has the following tasks defined

Copy gadget folder to AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\.
Start the gadget using the IDesktopGadget interface.

If I copy those two tasks to the "Release" configuration, they run just fine – no problems whatsoever. I've tried creating a seperate configuration called "Test", copied from the "Release" configuration.

If I try to build any configuration other than "Release", I get an instant message saying "Build succeeded" but no tasks have run at all.

EDIT: I've started a bounty because I still have the same problem with VS 2010 RC and it's very frustrating.

FURTHER EDIT:
Thanks to John I was able to debug the build process. It led me to realize that the <Target> element with condition for debugging was being completely ignored (not even processed). When I swapped the position of my <Target> elements, it worked:

<Target Name="Build" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'">
  <!--
      <Obfuscate PathToJasob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Jasob.com\Jasob 3.5" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Output="$(GadgetName)_obf" log="jasob_log.txt" />
  -->
  <BuildGadget BuildFormat="CAB" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
  <SignGadget CertName="Cert1" TimestampURL="http://timestamp.comodoca.com/authenticode" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
</Target>
<Target Name="Build" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
  <CopyToGadgets GadgetFolder="$(GadgetFolder)" GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
  <RunGadget GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
</Target>

So it looks like the second <Target Name="Build"> element overrides the first, despite the Condition attribute being present. What can I do?

Best Answer

As Joe suggests:

Change your output path like this, and see if that fixes the issue:

<OutputPath>bin\Debug\</OutputPath>

Update

Have you tried running msbuild /verbosity:diagnostic ?

Can you try that and show the output?

Second Update

Make one target 'build', and then make two tasks in that target:

<Target Name="Build">
    <CallTarget Targets="BuildRelease" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'" />
    <CallTarget Targets="BuildDebug" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'" />
</Target>

<Target Name="BuildRelease">
    <!--
        <Obfuscate PathToJasob="C:\Program Files (x86)\Jasob.com\Jasob 3.5" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Output="$(GadgetName)_obf" log="jasob_log.txt" />
    -->
    <BuildGadget BuildFormat="CAB" Path="$(GadgetFolder)" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
    <SignGadget CertName="Cert1" TimestampURL="http://timestamp.comodoca.com/authenticode" Target="$(GadgetName).gadget" />
</Target>

<Target Name="BuildDebug">
  <CopyToGadgets GadgetFolder="$(GadgetFolder)" GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
  <RunGadget GadgetName="$(GadgetName)" />
</Target>

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.

Visual-studio – MSBuild doesn’t copy references (DLL files) if using project dependencies in solution

I just deal with it like this. Go to the properties of your reference and do this:

Set "Copy local = false"
Save
Set "Copy local = true"
Save

and that's it.

Visual Studio 2010 doesn't initially put: <private>True</private> in the reference tag and setting "copy local" to false causes it to create the tag. Afterwards it will set it to true and false accordingly.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

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

Visual-studio – MSBuild doesn’t copy references (DLL files) if using project dependencies in solution

Related Topic