Automatically update version number

Question

I would like the version property of my application to be incremented for each build but I\'m not sure on how to enable this functionality in Visual Studio (2005/2008). I ha

Answer 1

[Visual Studio 2017, .csproj properties]

To automatically update your PackageVersion/Version/AssemblyVersion property (or any other property), first, create a new Microsoft.Build.Utilities.Task class that will get your current build number and send back the updated number (I recommend to create a separate project just for that class).

I manually update the major.minor numbers, but let MSBuild to automatically update the build number (1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3, etc. :)

using Microsoft.Build.Framework;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

public class RefreshVersion : Microsoft.Build.Utilities.Task
{
    [Output]
    public string NewVersionString { get; set; }
    public string CurrentVersionString { get; set; } 

    public override bool Execute()
    {       
        Version currentVersion = new Version(CurrentVersionString ?? "1.0.0");

        DateTime d = DateTime.Now;
        NewVersionString = new Version(currentVersion.Major, 
            currentVersion.Minor, currentVersion.Build+1).ToString();
        return true;
    }

}

Then call your recently created Task on MSBuild process adding the next code on your .csproj file:

    
...


   
          
             
   
   
   

...

 ..
 1.1.4
 ..

When picking Visual Studio Pack project option (just change to BeforeTargets="Build" for executing the task before Build) the RefreshVersion code will be triggered to calculate the new version number, and XmlPoke task will update your .csproj property accordingly (yes, it will modify the file).

When working with NuGet libraries, I also send the package to NuGet repository by just adding the next build task to the previous example.

c:\nuget\nuget is where I have the NuGet client (remember to save your NuGet API key by calling nuget SetApiKey or to include the key on the NuGet push call).

Just in case it helps someone ^_^.