msbuild custom task

5
votes

I have a custom MSBuild task that takes in a set of JavaScript files, minifies them, and outputs them, with the extension .min.js. When I do a normal build through Visual Studio, it works perfectly and the .min.js files are output to the same directory as the original files. When I try to deploy using the Publish feature in Visual Studio, only the original .js files make it to the publish directory.... How can I get the output of my task to be counted as "content" so that it will end up in the published folder?

EDIT: I was able to figure it out by adding the Output tag inside my task and then creating an ItemGroup around that:

<Target Name="AfterBuild">      
    <ItemGroup>
        <JavaScriptFiles Include="Scripts\*.js" Exclude="Scripts\*.min.js" />
    </ItemGroup>
    <JsCompress Files="@(JavaScriptFiles)" OutputPath="Scripts">
        <Output TaskParameter="CompressedFiles" ItemName="CompressedFiles" />
    </JsCompress>
    <ItemGroup>
        <Content Include="@(CompressedFiles)" />
    </ItemGroup>
</Target>
2
visual-studiomsbuildpublishmsbuild-task

2 Answers

2
votes

Build and Publish are separate targets. Add a target to your project, abstract your minification to its own target, then make the AfterBuild and Publish target depend on the minification target. Something like this:

  <Target Name="AfterBuild" DependsOnTargets="Build;Minify">
  </Target>
  <Target Name="Publish" DependsOnTargets="Build;Minify">
  </Target>
  <Target Name="Minify" DependsOnTargets="Build">
    <ItemGroup>
      <JavaScriptFiles Include="Scripts\*.js" Exclude="Scripts\*.min.js" />
    </ItemGroup>
    <JsCompress Files="@(JavaScriptFiles)" OutputPath="Scripts">
      <Output TaskParameter="CompressedFiles" ItemName="CompressedFiles" />
    </JsCompress>
    <ItemGroup>
      <Content Include="@(CompressedFiles)" />
    </ItemGroup>
  </Target>

This snippet, of course, means you have to have a build target, which may or not be the case. For that reason you may need to modify this. Hope this helps!

0
votes

Change the file properties. Check the Build Action and Copy to Output Directory properties for those files.