Recursive Copy in TFS MSBuild

In working with TFS I just discovered the Well-Known Item Metadata (bad name in my opinion as I don't they they are really all that "Well-known") which can be used in MSBuild. One of these is %(RecursiveDir) .

From MSDN:

     If the Include attribute contains the wildcard **, this metadata specifies the path to the file, beginning at the location of the wildcard. For more information on wildcards, see How to: Use Wildcards to Build All Files in a Directory. 

    This example has no RecursiveDir metadata, but if the following example was used to include this item, the item would contain a RecursiveDir value of MyProject\Source\. 

    <ItemGroup> 

        <MyItem Include="C:\**\Program.cs" /> 

    </ItemGroup> 

    If the following example was used to include this item, the RecursiveDir value of the item would remain MyProject\Source\. 

    <ItemGroup> 

        <MyItem Include="C:\**\Source\Program.cs" /> 

    </ItemGroup>

This gives a lot of flexibility when using MSBuild. It allows you to create a ItemGroup element which can include and exclude files in a directory recursively and then copy those files recursively to another directory!

This allowed me to do the following to copy the build out put of a web site (which naturally has a lot of sub-folders) easily up to the server.

    <Target Name="AfterDropBuild" >

      <Message Text="AfterDropBuild being fired" />

      <ItemGroup>

        <Compile Include="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\User Interface\**\*.*"

                 Exclude="$(DropLocation)\$(BuildNumber)\Mixed Platforms\Release\_PublishedWebsites\User Interface\connectionStrings.config"/>

      </ItemGroup>

      <Copy SourceFiles="@(Compile)" DestinationFolder="\\ServerName\MyFolder\%(RecursiveDir)"></Copy>

      <Message Text="Completed coping files" />

    </Target>

MSBuild takes awhile to learn all the tricks, but the more tricks I learn the more I like it.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Thanks man

September 25, 2008 at 2:07 PM

document scanning said…

TFS MSbuild an excellent feature which uses metadata to manage records.MSbuild flexible to work on.Thanks for giving the coding of the metadata as it makes the task simple to understand.I"ll try to run the code and see how it works.

March 18, 2011 at 11:25 AM

Experience Profile Anonymous, Unknown and Known contacts

When you first get started with Sitecore's experience profile the reporting for contacts can cause a little confusion. There are 3 terms that are thrown around, 1) Anonymous 2) Unknown 3) Known. When you read the docs they can bleed into each other a little. First, have a read through the Sitecore tracking documentation to get a feel for what Sitecore is trying to do. There are a couple key things here to first understand: Unless you call " IdentifyAs() " for request the contact is always anonymous. Tracking of anonymous contacts is off by default. Even if you call "IdentifyAs()" if you don't set facet values for the contact (like first name and email) the contact will still show up in your experience profile as "unknown" (because it has no facet data to display). Enabled Anonymous contacts Notice in the picture I have two contacts marked in a red box. Those are my "known" contacts that I called "IdentifyAs"

Uniting Testing Expression Predicate with Moq

I recently was setting up a repository in a project with an interface on all repositories that took a predicate. As part of this I needed to mock out this call so I could unit test my code. The vast majority of samples out there for mocking an expression predicate just is It.IsAny<> which is not very helpful as it does not test anything other then verify it got a predicate. What if you actually want to test that you got a certain predicate though? It is actually pretty easy to do but not very straight forward. Here is what you do for the It.IsAny<> approach in case someone is looking for that. this .bindingRepository.Setup(c => c.Get(It.IsAny<Expression<Func<UserBinding, bool >>>())) .Returns( new List<UserBinding>() { defaultBinding }.AsQueryable()); This example just says to always return a collection of UserBindings that contain “defaultBinding” (which is an object I setup previously). Here is what it looks like when you want to pass in an exp

Excel XIRR and C#

I have spend that last couple days trying to figure out how to run and Excel XIRR function in a C# application. This process has been more painful that I thought it would have been when started. To save others (or myself the pain in the future if I have to do it again) I thought I would right a post about this (as post about XIRR in C# have been hard to come by). Lets start with the easy part first. In order to make this call you need to use the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel dll. When you use this dll take note of what version of the dll you are using. If you are using a version less then 12 (at the time of this writing 12 was the highest version) you will not have an XIRR function call. This does not mean you cannot still do XIRR though. As of version 12 (a.k.a Office 2007) the XIRR function is a built in function to Excel. Prior version need an add-in to use this function. Even if you have version 12 of the interop though it does not mean you will be able to use the function. The

Security Config in IIS Express

I have gotten tired of always having to look this up or remember where it is at. That means it is time to post to my blog so I can find it easier and hopefully others can too. If you are having issues with IIS Express authentication errors (like the Unauthorized 401.2 error I always get) here is some help. I can never remember what the last setting was I had IIS Express set to for authorization. To change IIS Express for windows auth or anonymous auth you want to work with the applicationhost.config file. It can be found here …Documents\IISExpress\config. You want to change the settings in the following area of the config file. < authentication > < anonymousAuthentication enabled ="true" userName ="" /> < basicAuthentication enabled ="false" /> < clientCertificateMappingAuthentication enabled ="false" /> < digestAuthentication enabled ="false" />

WPF Localization - RESX Option

About a year ago I was building a WPF project in .Net 3.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I wanted to revisit this subject and see what has changed in .Net 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. I will make a few of these posts to try and cover all the different options (RESX option, LocBaml option, Resource Dictionary Option). In this blog I will focus on using a resx file to localize an application. To show how the resx option is done I created a WPF form with three labels on it. The first label has is text set inline in XAML, the second has it text set via code behind from the resx file and the third has its text set via XAML accessing the resx file. The first thing that needs to happen to setup a project for localization is a small change to the project file. To make this change you will need to open the project file in notepad (or some other generic editor). In the first PropertyGroup section you need to add the follow XML node <UICulture>en-US</UICulture>. So the project file node w

Toad's Code

Search This Blog