CODEWITHSUNDEEP
tfstfsbuild
mcollier
mcollier

Reputation: 3719

How to build multiple projects in a solution, each project with a different target?

I’m working with a VS2010 solution that has multiple projects (normal assemblies, an ASP.NET MVC project, a Windows Azure project, and a SQL project). I am trying to figure out how to set up a TFS build definition to deploy both the Windows Azure project and the SQL project.

I know how to do a Windows Azure deployment, and have a custom build task in the Windows Azure project file (.ccproj) that does the deployment. I can easily create a build definition that runs against the .ccproj file, passing in some MSBuild command line arguments as parameters, and works as expected.

I can create another build definition that runs against the SQL project (.sqlproj) file, passing to MSBuild the build targets and parameters needed to build and publish the SQL project. That works as expected.

As two distinct build definitions what I have works. Easy enough.

What I have yet to figure out is how to combine these two build definitions into one. Is that even possible (without a lot of work)? Ideally I’d be able to kick off a new build that will build the projects and deploy them both (just as they do as separate build definitions) as part of a single unit of work.

I have tried using the solution file as the item to build, and specifying the build targets as /t:<project>:<target>;<project>:<target>. But, apparently that syntax only works for targets in the base set and not any custom targets or those imported by other .targets files (or so that’s my understanding).

What is the best (simplest) way to accomplish what I’m looking to do?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3870

Answers (1)

Nick Nieslanik
Nick Nieslanik

Reputation: 4458

Sure you can totally do this! Basically, you need to have a target in each project with the same name. Then you change the DependsOn list for each to include the project specific list of targets. Example:

Project 1:

 <Target Name="MyBuild" DependsOnTargets="AzureTarget1,AzureTarget2" />

Project 2:

 <Target Name="MyBuild" DependsOnTargets="SQLTarget1,SQLTarget2" />

Then you can tell the build definition to build the MyBuild target on each and it should invoke the appropriate DependsOn targets.

This is a very simple example of how to do this, but you can make this much more robust if you also use MSBuild Traversal projects and an MSBuild traversal task much like the method described in the following article under the "Building Large Source Trees" section:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd483291.aspx#id0100082

Upvotes: 3

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