Get Visual Studio to run a T4 Template on every build

Question

How do I get a T4 template to generate its output on every build? As it is now, it only regenerates it when I make a change to the template.

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Answer 1

Here is my solution - similar to the accepted answer. We had a problem with our source control. The target .cs files are read-only and the T4 was failing. Here is the code, that runs T4 in temp folder, compares target files, and copies it only in case of same change. It does not fix the problem with read.only files, but at least it does not occur very often:

Transform.bat

ECHO Transforming T4 templates
SET CurrentDirBackup=%CD%
CD %1
ECHO %1
FOR /r %%f IN (*.tt) DO call :Transform %%f
CD %CurrentDirBackup%
ECHO T4 templates transformed
goto End

:Transform
set ttFile=%1
set csFile=%1

ECHO Transforming %ttFile%:
SET csFile=%ttFile:~0,-2%cs
For %%A in ("%ttFile%") do Set tempTT=%TEMP%\%%~nxA
For %%A in ("%csFile%") do Set tempCS=%TEMP%\%%~nxA

copy "%ttFile%" "%tempTT%
"%COMMONPROGRAMFILES(x86)%\microsoft shared\TextTemplating\11.0\TextTransform.exe"  "%tempTT%"

fc %tempCS% %csFile% > nul
if errorlevel 1 (
 :: You can try to insert you check-out command here.
 "%COMMONPROGRAMFILES(x86)%\microsoft shared\TextTemplating\11.0\TextTransform.exe"  "%ttFile%"
) ELSE (
 ECHO  no change in %csFile%
)

del %tempTT%
del %tempCS%
goto :eof

:End

You can try to add your check-out command on a line (:: You can try ....)

In your project set this as a prebuild action:

Path-To-Transform.bat "$(ProjectDir)"