Order of AfterBuild tasks in Visual Studio projects …?

Question

I have defined several AfterBuild - Tasks in my Visual Studio project with different conditions:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='FinalBuilder'">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for FinalBuilder ---" />
</Target>
<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for MvcBuildViews ---" />
</Target>

But only the last one is executed if the condition match. If I choose the FinalBuilder-Configuration, the AfterBuild tasks is ignored and not executed. If I change the order of the Targets in the project files (Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='FinalBuilder'" as last one), the AfterBuild for FinalBuilder-Configuration is executed but the one for MvcBuildViews is ignored.

Is the order of the target important? Is only the last AfterBuild task taken into account? Or how can I define different AfterBuild tasks with different Conditions?

Thanks

Konrad

Answer 1

The only second one is executed because it was redefined. See MSDN (Declaring targets in the project file chapter).

You should use only one AfterBuild target in your project file like this:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" >
    <Message Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'" Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for MvcBuildViews ---" />
    <Message Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='FinalBuilder'" Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for FinalBuilder ---" />
</Target> 

EDIT: Or use CallTarget task:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" >
    <CallTarget Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'" Targets="MvcBuildTarget" />
    <CallTarget Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='FinalBuilder'" Targets="FinalBuilderTarget" />
</Target> 

<Target Name="MvcBuildTarget">
    <Message Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for MvcBuildViews ---" />
</Target> 

<Target Name="FinalBuilderTarget" >
    <Message Importance="high" Text="--- AfterBuild for FinalBuilder ---" />
</Target> 

Answer 2

If you really need to run multiple AfterBuild tasks (this may be the case for example if you need different Input and Output sets for each task) you can use DependsOnTarget to simply make AfterBuild depend upon all of them:

  <Target Name="AfterBuild1"
    Inputs="stuff"
    Outputs="stuff">
      <Message Text="Running first after build task."  Importance="high" />
      <Exec Command="stuff" />
  </Target>
  <Target Name="AfterBuild2"
    Inputs="other stuff"
    Outputs="other stuff">
      <Message Text="Running other after build task."  Importance="high" />
      <Exec Command="stuff" />
  </Target>
  <Target Name="AfterBuild" DependsOnTargets="AfterBuild1;AfterBuild2" />

If you need to constrain their order, just make AfterBuild2 depend on AfterBuild1 with DependsOnTargets="AfterBuild1".