Good-practices: How to reuse .csproj and .sln files to create your MSBuild script for CI?

Question

What is the painless/maintainable way of using MSBuild as your build runner ? (Forgive the length of this post)

I was just trying my hand at TeamCity (which I must s

Answer 1

I didn't try TeamCity yet but did set up a Build environment for our new BizTalk project.

Following the excellent advice of Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi on my own question before starting out, I created a set of MSBuild .proj and .targets scripts.

The Core

A central .targets script for the actual build steps you want to perform:

<Project DefaultTargets="Deploy" xmlns="...">
    <!-- omitted validation steps, see referenced post for details -->
    <PropertyGroup>
        <PullDependsOn>
            $(ValidateDependsOn);
            Validate;
        </PullDependsOn>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <PropertyGroup>
        <BuildDependsOn>
            $(PullDependsOn);
            PullFromVersionControl;
        </BuildDependsOn>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <PropertyGroup>
        <DeployDependsOn>
            $(BuildDependsOn);
            Build;
        </DeployDependsOn>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <Target Name="PullFromVersionControl" DependsOnTargets="$(PullDependsOn)">
        <Exec Command="..." />
    </Target>

    <Target Name="Build" DependsOnTargets="$(BuildDependsOn)">
        <MSBuild Projects="@(ProjectsToBuild)" />
    </Target>

    <Target Name="Deploy" DependsOnTargets="$(DeployDependsOn)">
        <Exec Command="..." />
    </Target>
</Project>

The second core part are the configuration targets like you find them in your .csproj files

<Project xmlns="...">
    <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Environment)' == 'DEV' ">
        <SomeConfigKey Condition=" '$(SomeConfigKey)' == '' ">Foo</SomeConfigKey>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Environment)' == 'TEST' ">
        <SomeConfigKey Condition=" '$(SomeConfigKey)' == '' ">Bar</SomeConfigKey>
    </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

The Projects

The single .csproj itself is represented by a.targets file with just a collection of ItemGroups you need for building.

<Project xmlns="...">
    <ItemGroup>
        <!-- this group contains the list of items to pull from version control -->
        <Sources Include="@(Sources)" />
        <Sources Include="MyProjectRootDir" />
        <Sources Include="MyDependentProjectRootDir" />
    </ItemGroup>

    <ItemGroup>
        <ProjectsToBuild Include="@(ProjectsToBuild)" />
        <ProjectsToBuild Include="MyProject.csproj" />
    </ItemGroup>
</Project>

Putting it together

The .proj you are actually going to execute with MSBuild will import your Configuration, your Project (source code files) and the Core (Pull, Build and Deployment commands)

<Project DefaultTargets="Deploy" xmlns="...">
    <Import Project="Config.targets"/>

    <Import Project="Project.targets"/>

    <Import Project="Core.targets"/>
</Project>

Using this approach I was able to reuse the .targets containing the sources to build my some 50 projects in many different combinations instead of creating VS solutions to group them.

I hope you'll find this useful - I can add more details if you're interested.