CODEWITHSUNDEEP
msbuildconditional-statements
Ray
Ray

Reputation: 46555

How do I do a MSBuild Condition testing if an ItemGroup contains an item?

This should be simple, but I can't find how to do this (or maybe it's not possible).

In MSBuild I have an ItemGroup that is a list of files. I want to execute a task only if a particular file is in that ItemGroup

Something like:

<Copy Condition="@(Files) <contains> C:\MyFile.txt" .... />

Any way to do this? Preferably without writing a custom task.

Edit: The list of files is only to do with the condition. Otherwise it has no relation to the task.

Upvotes: 21

Views: 11229

Answers (2)

cdhanna
cdhanna

Reputation: 111

I had a similar issue, where I wanted to do something if a file was not included in an itemGroup. In my case, it was the <Compile> item group.

This snippet is scanning through all the files in the tag, and for each one, if the file's FullPath matches the TheFileIAmLookingFor, then I set a property indicating the file was found.

Then I can use that property, and if it isn't set, I can assume the item wasn't included in the <Compile> item group. In my case, the final action is to add the item only if it didn't exist. For context, I came across this issue while working on code-generation via custom msbuild build tasks, and the generated code was sometimes getting referenced twice, which was throwing a warning.

  <Target Name="CheckForFile" BeforeTargets="CoreCompile"">
    <PropertyGroup>
        <DoesMyFileExist Condition="%(Compile.FullPath) == $(TheFileIAmLookingFor)">1</DoesMyFileExist>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <Message Importance="high" Condition="$(DoesMyFileExist)=='1'" Text="It exists"/>
    <Message Importance="high" Condition="$(DoesMyFileExist)!='1'" Text="It does not exist!"/>
    
    <ItemGroup Condition="$(DoesMyFileExist)!='1'">
      <Compile Include="$(TheFileIAmLookingFor)" />
    </ItemGroup>
  </Target>

Upvotes: 0

radical
radical

Reputation: 4424

Try

<Copy Condition="'%(Files.Identity)' == 'C:\MyFile.txt'" .. />

Upvotes: 22

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