.NET Buzz Forum - MSBuild Custom Metadata

Before coming to MS, I wrote a bunch of general purpose NAnt scripts to help people do things like automate their builds, set up CC.NET and other fun things.

Of course, you have to imagine that I couldn’t just sit here and not explore MSBuild a bit here and there.

So while putting together a bootstrap MSBuild file for our build server, I discovered a cool feature I wish NAnt had had “back in the day”: Custom Metadata.

Suppose I want to create a target called UnitTest that called NUnit-Console.exe on a number of assemblies. Also assume that for various reasons, I can’t use wildcards to figure out which assemblies to use. I have to specify which specific assemblies I want it to run against.

One more thing, I want the tests to run with the current working directory set to the bin\Debug directory for that test assembly.

In NAnt, I would have had to use <foreach> and a number of other nasty property constructs, but in MSBuild it is a simple as this. (Please note the line numbers… I have manually wrapped some lines to make them fit on the page better.)

   1:  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

   2:  <Project DefaultTargets="BuildAll"

               xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

   3:      <PropertyGroup>

   4:          <NUnitExe>&quot;C:\Program Files\NUnit V2.1\bin\nunit-console.exe&quot;</NUnitExe>

   5:          <NUnitArgs>/nologo</NUnitArgs>

   6:      </PropertyGroup>

7:

   8:      <PropertyGroup Condition="!Exists('$(Configuration)')">

   9:          <Configuration>Debug</Configuration>

  10:      </PropertyGroup>

11:

  12:      <ItemGroup>

  13:          <TestAssembly Include="Microsoft.Practices.ComponentModel.Tests.dll">

  14:              <WorkingDirectory>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\UnitTests\ComponentModel

                       \bin\$(Configuration)</WorkingDirectory>

  15:          </TestAssembly>

  16:          <TestAssembly Include="Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.CompositeUI.Tests.dll">

  17:              <WorkingDirectory>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\UnitTests

                       \CompositeUI\bin\$(Configuration)</WorkingDirectory>

  18:          </TestAssembly>

  19:      </ItemGroup>

20:

  21:      <Target Name="BuildAll" DependsOnTargets="Clean;Compile;UnitTest" />

22:

  23:      <Target Name="Clean">

  24:          <MSBuild Projects="CompositeUI-CS.sln" Properties="Configuration=$(Configuration)"

                   Targets="Clean" />

  25:      </Target>

26:

  27:      <Target Name="Compile">

  28:          <MSBuild Projects="CompositeUI-CS.sln" Properties="Configuration=$(Configuration)" />

  29:      </Target>

30:

  31:      <Target Name="UnitTest" DependsOnTargets="Compile">

  32:          <Exec ContinueOnError='true' Command='$(NUnitEXE) $(NUnitArgs) @(TestAssembly)'

                   WorkingDirectory='%(WorkingDirectory)' />

  33:      </Target>

  34:  </Project>

The “trick” is in the UnitTest target. The @(TestAssembly) tells MSBuild to do that task once for each item named “TestAssembly” in the above <ItemGroup>. The %(WorkingDirectory) says to pull the WorkingDirectory metadata element from the specific TestAssembly item that is being used for that task.

That is very cool. I think I may be able to find all kinds of interesting uses for this kind of custom metadata. I certainly don’t think I could have written the same funtionality in NAnt with a script this short.

Also, there is a bunch of built-in, so called “Well Known Metadata” documented over in MSDN. Check it out.


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