use post build events with Fody.Costura installed

Question

Once I added Fody.Costura to my project, my post build event that was copying the resulting assembly into a different location started failing with access denied message. That makes sense since Costura uses MSBuild to embed the assemblies. Is there a way to force my post builds to execute after Costura is finished? Example of a post build command:

copy /Y "$(TargetPath)" "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2019\HOK-Addin.bundle\Contents"

Not likely to be Fody that causes this problem. Temporarily disable the installed anti-malware product and try again. Do document what you use. — Hans Passant, Oct 08 '18 at 20:55
Actually, I was able to fix this by doing a custom `Target` and using the `Copy` routine. I just made sure that I set my `AfterTargets` to `AfterBuild;NonWinFodyTarget` and that did the trick. Before that I was using just the standard post build event that must have been executing before Fody finished its job, and files were still locked. — konrad, Oct 08 '18 at 21:09
The Copy build task is a lot smarter, it will retry the copy repeatedly on an "access denied" failure. You are not the first programmer with anti-malware induced trouble. Please do document what you use, these kind of questions don't stop coming until we learn what's good and what's crap-to-avoid. — Hans Passant, Oct 08 '18 at 21:56
I am curious why you think its caused by anti malware software. Post Build Commands worked fine before i added Fody. The issue is with locked/denied access to the file, likely because Fody is using it when command fires. I agree that Tasks are much better, but i doubt that anti-malware is involved. Care to explain your thinking on this? — konrad, Oct 08 '18 at 23:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 09 '18 at 19:08

Basically the solution to my own question is the following.

  <Target Name="CopyFiles" AfterTargets="AfterBuild;NonWinFodyTarget">
    <Message Text="Signing file..." Importance="high" />
    <Exec Command="&quot;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.17134.0\x64\signtool.exe&quot; sign /c &quot;Code Signing - DTM&quot; /v &quot;$(TargetPath)&quot;" />
    <Message Text="Copy files..." Importance="high" />
    <Message Text="$(TargetPath) &gt; $(ALLUSERSPROFILE)\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\$(Configuration)\HOK-Addin.bundle\Contents" Importance="high" />
    <Message Text="$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).addin &gt; $(ALLUSERSPROFILE)\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\$(Configuration)" Importance="high" />
    <Copy SourceFiles="$(TargetPath)" DestinationFolder="$(ALLUSERSPROFILE)\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\$(Configuration)\HOK-Addin.bundle\Contents" ContinueOnError="true" />
    <Copy SourceFiles="$(TargetDir)$(TargetName).addin" DestinationFolder="$(ALLUSERSPROFILE)\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\$(Configuration)" ContinueOnError="true" />
  </Target>

What I did, was to replace the standatd Post Build Command that runs Command Line routines, with a MSBuild Target and a Task.Giving it flags to run after Build is finished and Fody is done merging assemblies resolves my issue.

What also helps is the fact that Tasks have flags like ContinueOnError="true" that allow the task to keep trying until the file is available (if that was the issue) as opposed to command line utilities that would just fail.

Cheers!

use post build events with Fody.Costura installed

1 Answers1