visual studio 2010 - When does MSBuild set the $(ProjectName) property?

Question

I'm fairly new to MSBuild, and I've done some customization on a WPF project file that I'm building both in Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010. I've customized the output path as follows:

<OutputPath Condition=" '$(TeamBuildOutDir)' == '' ">$(SolutionDir)buildinaries$(ProjectName)$(Configuration)$(Platform)</OutputPath>
<OutputPath Condition=" '$(TeamBuildOutDir)' != '' ">$(TeamBuildOutDir)binaries$(ProjectName)$(Configuration)$(Platform)</OutputPath>

This allows me to build to a centralized binaries directory when building on the desktop, and allows TFS to find the binaries when CI builds are running.

However, it seems that in both cases, the $(ProjectDir) property is evaluating to '' at build time, which creates strange results. Doing some debugging, it appears as if $(ProjectName) is set by the time BeforeBuild executes, but that my OutputPath property is evaluating it prior to that point.

<ProjectNameUsedTooEarly Condition=" '$(ProjectName)' == '' ">true</ProjectNameUsedTooEarly>

The preceding property is in the same property group as my OutputPath property. In the BeforeBuild target, $(ProjectNameUsedTooEarly) evaluates to true, but $(ProjectName) evaluates to the project name as normal by that point.

What can I do to ensure that $(ProjectName) has got a value when I use it?

I just used Attrice's MSBuild Sidekick to debug through my build file, and in the very first target available for breakpoint (_CheckForInvalidConfigurationAndPlatform) all the properties seem to be set already. ProjectName is already set correctly, but my OutputPath property has already been set using the blank value of ProjectName.

Answer 1

Hmm - bit of confusion going on there which I'll try to sort out

1. Don't use $(ProjectDir) - use $(MSBuildProjectDir) - that's the location of your csproj in the source tree and is set by MSBuild.exe as a reserved property. I don't think $(ProjectDir) is available until after Microsoft.Common.Targets has been imported (which is done by Microsoft.Csharp.targets). Property evaluation is always carried out "in-place" within the file, and not when all the Imports have completed. This may explain why you are seeing the property as valid in the SideKick tool

2. Likewise use $(MSBuildProjectName) (which I think will address your problem)

3. I'm unsure about VS2010 and TFS2010 (as that uses MSBuild 4.0 and no doubt a new TeamBuild), but in 2008, it's pretty hard within a .csproj to figure out if your build was called from a command line/IDE build or from within TeamBuild. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think $(TeamBuildOutDir) is available within your csproj. I normally test $(TeamBuildConstants) property, as that property is passed down when teambuild calls your proj file. YMMV as I haven't played with 2010 yet..