msbuild proj file creator/tool for msbuild proj file

Question

Is there any tool that will create .proj file. Its very cumbersome to create it by hand for big & complex project structure.

Answer 1

According to this article, there is a way to generate msbuild .proj file from Visual Studio solution.

You just have to run Visual Studio command prompt and set a special environment variable:

set MSBuildEmitSolution=1

Then cd to your project directory and run msbuild <<your project>>.sln.

This will generate a .sln.metaproj which in fact is an msbuild project file.

Answer 2

There are not many such tools. The only ones that I can think of are

• MSBuild Sidekick
• MSBuild Explorer

Answer 3

There's more than one way to use MSBuild. Are you using Visual Studio for your projects (if so, that limits your options)? What language is the code written in?

That said, here are my suggestions:

• Use wildcard includes if they help solve your problem
• Use Visual Studio if you can