More on msbuild

Nope - its not great.

I have a project "Build" containing the task that builds first. A project "Publish" builds last and uses the Build.Publish task to do its work.

All works well the first build. Then you make a change to "Build", rebuild and you still can't copy the Build DLL into its bin directory. Worse you can't do it until you kill off the instance of Visual Studio you're building with.

It all works if devenv.exe is executed from the command-line, but I wanted to avoid that if possible. Oh well.

msbuild shenanigans

Bit of a pain this.

I want to be able to create a set of custom msbuild build tasks that:

1. is compiled as part of my solution (so it's up-to-date)
   
2. is referenced by the setup project (the last project to build)
3. generates a set of scripts from templates and zips them up
   
4. publishes the zip file and the installer to a predetermined place
5. I can use it when I'm working in Visual Studio
   

Instead its looking like I have to:

1. compile the tasks independently of my solution
2. create a new (and useless) project dependent on the setup project to host the tasks
3. etc etc
   

Surely there's something wrong here?

Point 2 gives problems because setup projects simply aren't msbuild compatible!

Point 1 I hope I can improve on - my task is attached to the project that builds the assembly and doesn't build because the assembly is in use (by msbuild itself).

Not that unreasonable I suppose but I'd have liked msbuild to be smart enough to realise it's using the assembly its about to build and defer loading it since its only used in the AfterBuild standard target!

Anyone watching with any clues? If not, back to RTFM again.