Using $(SolutionDir) when running template via TextTransform.exe

Question

I\'m trying to get our T4 templates to run at build time, without adding dependencies on the Visual Studio Modeling SDK. I\'ve successfully used a variant of the batch file

Answer 1

I used an approach very similar to piers7 -- except in my case, I actually needed to keep the *.tt file in the same directory (because of runtime lookup of files based on relative paths), but didn't care if the file itself was named differently. As such, instead of having $templateTemp create a temporary file in a temp directory, I kept it in the same folder.

I also needed to recursively search for the *.tt files anywhere in the solution directory.

Here is the resulting script, taking piers7's and modifying it:

<#
.Synopsis
Executes all the T4 templates within designated areas of the containing project
#>
param(

)

$ErrorActionPreference = 'stop';
$scriptDir = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path

$commonProgramFiles32 = $env:CommmonProgramFiles
if (Test-Path environment::"CommonProgramFiles(x86)") { $commonProgramFiles32 = (gi "Env:CommonProgramFiles(x86)").Value };

$t4 = Resolve-Path "$commonProgramFiles32\Microsoft Shared\TextTemplating\12.0\texttransform.exe";
$solutionDir = Resolve-Path "$scriptDir\"
$templates = Get-ChildItem -Path $scriptDir -Filter *.tt -Recurse
$extension = '.ts';

pushd $scriptDir;
try{
    foreach($template in $templates){
        # keeping the same path (because my template references relative paths), 
        #    but copying under different name:
        $templateTemp = $template.FullName + "____temporary"
        $targetfile = [IO.Path]::ChangeExtension($template.FullName, $extension);
        Write-Host "Running $($template.Name)"
        Write-Host "...output to $targetFile";

        # When run from outside VisualStudio you can't use $(SolutionDir)
        # ...so have to modify the template to get this to work...
        # ...do this by cloning to a temp file, and running this instead
        Get-Content $template.FullName | % {
            $_.Replace('$(SolutionDir)',"$solutionDir")
        } | Out-File -FilePath:$templateTemp

        try{
            & $t4 $templateTemp -out $targetfile -I $template.DirectoryName;
        }finally{
            if(Test-Path $templateTemp){ Remove-Item $templateTemp; }
        }
    }
}finally{
    popd;
}