You can, but not with "Content." It depends on the task of the element, but most of the built-in you can hack, arnt worth the problem or side effects.
There is a basic way to solve this problem :) This also avoids the unpleasant PostBuild shell shell if you do .Net and use the build process.
I have not seen any other answers like this using strieght up MSBuild, where I think the gist of the question is OPs. This is the basic concept and the shortest path, prohibiting the search for the type of element that has the path parameter "relative to the path to the path" without side effects.
1) Post process style:
<ItemGroup> ... <MyTargets Include="test.stl"/> ... </ItemGroup>
Then at the bottom (using whatever paths you follow):
<PropertyGroup> <MyDeployDir>$(SolutionDir)$(Configuration)</MyDeployDir> <MyOtherDeployDir>$(SolutionDir)$(Configuration)\Templates</MyDeployDir> </PropertGroup>
Then your existing MS build includes (don't add this, here as a marker):
<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
Then 'after build':
<Target Name="AfterBuild"> <Copy SourceFiles="@(MyTargets)" DestinationFolder="$(MyDeployDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" /> <Copy SourceFiles="@(MyOtherTargets)" DestinationFolder="$(MyOtherDeployDir)" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" /> <Copy SourceFiles="@(MyTargets2)" DestinationFolder="$(MyDeployDir)\IHeardYourMomLikesGrapeNuts" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" /> </Target>
The fundamental problem is that project elements do nothing by default, they have a type of type "Content" or "MyTarget". Its those types that say what will happen. You could find a task or type or build an include script that has what you want, but there is nothing internal in the itemgroup element as far as this happens with this file during build. The above is a balance between the power of a specially constructed "task", but without any problem.
After adding
<ItemGroup> <MyOutFiles Include="xxx.xxx" />
Once in a project file, it will appear in the BuildAction list for any file, where you can install any file without having to edit the proj file manually.
2) in one step
In later versions of MSBuild, you can embed an “ItemGroup” inside the “AfterBuild” target, do higher or do other fancy things without touching the rest of the file. This allows, for example, to capture the result of the assembly using a simple Include and force it out elsewhere. That's it, without doing anything RoboCopy or resorting to more complex processing of target functions of the assembly.
<Target Name="AfterBuild"> <ItemGroup> <MyOutFiles Include="$(OutDir)*.*" /> </ItemGroup> <Copy SourceFiles="@(MyOutFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(SolutionDir)\Application" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />
Edit (due to low voice ?, posters comment from the moment of removal):
To eliminate the ambiguity of possible methods and repeat this, this method does not use MSBuild functions or alternative tasks, such as "RoboCopy", but had to show a cleaner MSBuild style using basic functionality, for example, to create tasks such as "Contents" .
The question is, can I specify a "differnt folder for the next file", and can I do this for the content tag. You can redirect all BuildAction using MSBuild functions, but I do not believe this was a question.
You can do this in one step, as shown above, so I don’t think it is more complicated and believe that it is easier to read. The short form is below, and it allows you to create your own BuildAction, which can be processed anyway, as it wants. So no, you cannot say “Content” to select a different folder for a particular file marked as “Content”, but you can do another build action, which is pretty easy. You can also embed meta information in the StlFiles tag, which directs the action so that you can set it on the tag itself, or link StlFiles earlier in a process such as content, but it's more complicated.
<StlFiles Include="test.stl" /> ... <Target Name="AfterBuild"> <Copy SourceFiles="@(StlFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(SolutionDir)\Release\MyTypes" SkipUnchangedFiles="true" />