Skip / exclude project types from MSBUILD when using the API

Question

I use the MSBUILD API to create solutions using a service.

eg,

var pc = new ProjectCollection(); var buildProperties = new Dictionary<string, string> { {"Configuration", "Release"}, {"Platform", "Any CPU"}, {"OutputPath", _outputPath} }; var buildParameters = new BuildParameters(pc); var buildRequest = new BuildRequestData(_buildFile, buildProperties, null, new[] { "Clean", "Rebuild" }, null); var buildResult = BuildManager.DefaultBuildManager.Build(buildParameters, buildRequest); 

What I want to do is pass a list of excluded project types or extensions. To start, I would like to exclude:

• Database Projects
• WinRT Projects
• shared MSBUILD files (without a project type GUID).

Are there any ways to solve this problem by passing some parameters to the MSBUILD manager?

Answer 1

This is not exactly what you need, but I just managed using the msbuild API during the old day job and thought this code might be useful:

 var basePath = "path-to-where-source-is"; var outputDir = "path-to-output"; // Setup some properties that'll apply to all projs var pc = Microsoft.Build.Evaluation.ProjectCollection.GlobalProjectCollection; pc.SetGlobalProperty("Configuration", "Debug"); pc.SetGlobalProperty("Platform", "Any CPU"); pc.SetGlobalProperty("OutDir", outputDir); // Generate the metaproject that represents a given solution file var slnProjText = SolutionWrapperProject.Generate( Path.Combine(basePath, "NAME-OF-SOLUTION-FILE.sln"), "4.0", null); // It now a nice (well, ugly) XML blob, so read it in using(var srdr = new StringReader(slnProjText)) using(var xrdr = XmlReader.Create(srdr)) { // Load the meta-project into the project collection var slnProj = pc.LoadProject(xrdr, "4.0"); // Slice and dice the projects in solution with LINQ to // get a nice subset to work with var solutionProjects = from buildLevel in Enumerable.Range(0, 10) let buildLevelType = "BuildLevel" + buildLevel let buildLevelItems = slnProj.GetItems(buildLevelType) from buildLevelItem in buildLevelItems let include = buildLevelItem.EvaluatedInclude where !include.Contains("Some thing I don't want to build") select new { Include=include, Project = pc.LoadProject(Path.Combine(basePath, include)) }; // For each of them, build em! foreach (var projectPair in solutionProjects) { var project = projectPair.Project; var include = projectPair.Include; var outputPath = outputDir; project.SetProperty("OutputPath", outputPath); Console.WriteLine("Building project:" + project.DirectoryPath); var buildOk = project.Build("Build"); if(buildOk) { Console.WriteLine("Project build success!"); } else { throw new Exception("Build failed"); } } }