CODEWITHSUNDEEP
msbuildimportmodularity
zapradical
zapradical

Reputation: 11

Using MSBuild Import to modularize a project

I have developed a large MSBuild project to build a portion of our solution. There's a lot of things going on-- XML parsing/replacing, Windows services, remote copy, etc. As a result, the file has grown really difficult to manage, despite my best efforts to add decorations in comments.

As a goof, I broke out the main chunks of functionality out into separate files, like "XML.targets", "Services.targets", etc and imported them into the main "Build.proj." The build still worked and I immediately found it to be much more manageable.

However, all the info I have read on the Import feature of MSBuild is that it should be used to import reusable targets, ie those than can be consumed by -any- MSBuild project without any modifications. The separate projects I'm creating here are the opposite-- specific to one project and will break by default if use with anything else unless modified.

So I guess what I'm asking is, even though I can... should I? Is there an inherent danger in using Import strictly for the purpose of organizing a large project? Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 508

Answers (1)

alpha-mouse
alpha-mouse

Reputation: 5003

No, there is no inherent danger. I think it's a good decision to split large project into several .targets files specific to certain operation since it reduces overall complexity. The idea of creating reusable targets means that they should have as little dependencies on the other parts as possible. By analogy you can think of separate .targets files as classes. The less coupled they are - the better. Because modification in one targets file will less likely break the whole process. You can take a peace of paper, draw your targets files as points with your main project in the center and draw all the connections between them. Say if one targets file overrides target from another or expects some properties from it or somehow else depends on it then there is a connection. In the perfect scenario you'll get something like a star.
In short: you should if it reduces complexity.

Upvotes: 1

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