CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studiomsbuild
Martin
Martin

Reputation: 2086

Accessing items in a referenced project

When a C# project references another C# project (e.g. a lib), Visual Studio adds something like this to the project file:

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectReference Include="..\some\path\lib.csproj">
    <Project>{4beb6b28-90f5-77c3-af2a-f5fa3336dac9}</Project>
    <Name>Lib</Name>
  </ProjectReference>
</ItemGroup>

Let’s assume, lib.csproj contains some items like this:

<SpecialFile Include="foo.dll" />
<SpecialFile Inclued="bar.txt" />

How can I access these SpecialFile items in the first project file? I’d like to do something like this:

<Target Name="SpecialFileCopyTarget" AfterTargets="AfterBuild">
  <Copy
      DestinationFolder="$(OutputPath)"
      SourceFiles="@(SpecialFile)"         <-- ?????
      SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
</Target>

I think I do not want to Import the lib.csproj, just get the items somehow.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 20

Answers (1)

Nikerboker
Nikerboker

Reputation: 833

XmlPeek task allows to query any XML file:

<XmlPeek Namespaces="&lt;Namespace Prefix='n' Uri='http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003'/&gt;"
         XmlInputPath="%(ProjectReference.FullPath)"
         Query="/n:Project/n:ItemGroup/n:SpecialFile/@Include">
  <Output TaskParameter="Result" ItemName="SpecialFiles" />
</XmlPeek>

This code will collect SpecialFile items from all referenced projects. Please specify ToolsVersion="4.0" for your project.

Upvotes: 1

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