msbuild - AfterPublish target not working

Question

World's simplest task (see below) is not being executed after I publish my web application project. Any idea why?

<Target Name="AfterPublish">
  <Copy SourceFiles="C:A.txt" DestinationFiles="C:B.txt" />
</Target>

Answer 1

Note: The following applies to VS2010 and publishing web-application projects with the "Web Deploy" publish method selected in the 'Build/Publish {projectname}' dialog.

Julien Hoarau's correct in that "Publish" is NOT the name of the msbuild target invoked in the above case; the actual target name is "MSDeployPublish".

Therefore, you have to define a "Target" element whose "AfterTarget" attribute's value is set to "MSDeployPublish" - the "Name" attribute's value does not matter (as long as it's unique among target names).

Here's how to do it:

• Open the project file (e.g. *.csproj) in a text/XML editor and, just before the closing </Project> tag, add a <Target Name="CustomPostPublishAction" AfterTargets="MSDeployPublish"> element; pick a name of your choice for "CustomPostPublishAction".
• Add a so-called Task child element that performs the desired action; for instance, to add a command to be passed to cmd.exe, use an <Exec Command="..." /> element.

Example:

<Target Name="CustomPostPublishActions" AfterTargets="MSDeployPublish" >
    <Exec Command="echo Post-PUBLISH event: Active configuration is: $(ConfigurationName)" />
</Target>

Note:

• In command strings, use XML entity(?) references in place of characters that would break XML parsing, e.g. "&gt" in place of "<".
• For documentation of the <Target> element in general, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t50z2hka.aspx
• Task-elements reference here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7z253716.aspx
• In general, if you need to determine the name of the msbuild.exe target that is actually invoked by Visual Studio 2010, do the following:
  • Go to Tools/Options..., Project and Solutions/Build and Run, select 'Detailed' (or, for even more information, 'Diagnostic') from the dropdown list labeled 'MSBuild project build output verbosity.
  • After running the build/publish action, e.g. Build/Publish, examine the Output window for the last occurrence of the string "Done building target" to determine the top-level target that was invoked.