MSBuild: changing project references to file binary references

Question

I have a few .net / C# projects that I'm building with MSBuild.

In the project I'm building, there are some project references to other C# projects.

I'm only building individual projects, so I'd like to repoint the project references to actual binaries in a folder during the build.

I'm already setting "BuildProjectReferences" to False for my MSBuild step.

So essentially I want to have MSBuild ignore the project refs and look for those binaries in a new directory.

Is this possible to do? Is this possible without having to dynamically modify the project file prior to build?

** Update 1 **

More info might help...I'm actually building each binary via Ant/AntDotNet/MSBuild and uploading to Artifactory. I'm basically using Ivy's dependency management with .Net binaries.

Right now I have the uploads and downloads of dependencies working fine.

The only part I'm missing is getting MSBuild to look for the binaries as file dependencies instead of the project references that it has in the project file.

** Update 2 **

It looks like MSBuild supports editing the csproj file using XMLPoke and XMLPeek.

So in my case I'd need to change the following in my project file:

<ProjectReference Include="..\MyReferencedProject\MyReferencedProject.csproj">
  <Project>{MyReferencedProjectGUID}</Project>
  <Name>MyReferencedProject</Name>
  <Private>False</Private>
</ProjectReference>

to this

<Reference Include="MyReferencedProject">
</Reference>

Can anyone give me any pointers on that?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:08

0

Answer on Update2: Your question is related/duplicate to this question. There is no easy way to convert it. You should write MSBuild custom task for it to update MSBuild project files before build.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:08

Community

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answered Dec 06 '11 at 06:35

Ludwo

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Right, it's looking like I need to come up with some sort of XPath statement for that. Any help in the XPath/XSLT area would be greatly appreciated. – DonBecker Dec 06 '11 at 07:48
I don't think you can do it by XPath/XSLT. You need to get OutputPath and AssemblyName properties from referenced project and apply it on binary reference – Ludwo Dec 06 '11 at 09:40
Our naming is standardized so I don't need any properties from the file. The file reference will always match the project name exactly. – DonBecker Dec 06 '11 at 18:22

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 06 '11 at 21:44

I ended up using Ant combined with the xmltask addon.

<target name="convert" description="convert project references to file references">
    <echo>Converting the following Project references :: ${Project.ItemGroup.ProjectReference.Name}</echo>
    <xmltask source="MyParentProject.csproj" dest="MyParentProject.csproj">
        <rename path="/:Project/:ItemGroup/:ProjectReference/:Name" to="BinaryName"/>
    </xmltask>
    <replace file="MyParentProject.csproj" token="&lt;BinaryName&gt;" value="&lt;Reference Include=&quot;"/>
    <replace file="MyParentProject.csproj" token="&lt;/BinaryName&gt;" value="&quot;&gt;&lt;/Reference&gt;"/>
    <xmltask source="MyParentProject.csproj" dest="MyParentProject.csproj">
        <copy path="/:Project/:ItemGroup/:ProjectReference/:Reference" buffer="refbuffer" append="true"/>
        <paste path="/:Project/:ItemGroup[1]" buffer="refbuffer"/>
        <remove path="/:Project/:ItemGroup/:ProjectReference" /> 
    </xmltask>
    <echo>Conversion complete.</echo>
</target>

In the first xmltask we are setting the "Name" element to "BinaryName" so we can find it.

Next we have two Ant Replace tasks that change something like

"<BinaryName>MyReferencedProject</BinaryName>"

to

"<Reference Include="MyReferencedProject"></Reference>"

And in the last xmltask moves our project references we converted into file references into the upper ItemGroup that normally has the file references.

Then finally we delete the ProjectReferences section.

MSBuild: changing project references to file binary references

2 Answers2