Transforming TT files in MsBuild

Question

I need to build a DSL Solution using MsBuild and want to be able to transform the TT files, I have tried the guide on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee847423(VS.100).aspx but I am getting the following errors:

Failed to resolve include text for file:{0}

and also

Loading the include file '{0}' returned a null or empty string.

There is a page on MSDN which has these issues and there resolutions : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb126242(VS.100).aspx but don't really give me enough information to resolve the issue.

One thing to note in the error it has the following path:

Error 72 Failed to resolve include text for file:C:\source\XXXXXXXX\Dsl\GeneratedCode\Dsl\ToolboxHelper.tt. Line=-1, Column=-1 Dsl

but the location of the actual TT file is

C:\source\XXXXXXXX\Dsl\GeneratedCode\ToolboxHelper.tt

Answer 1

This was answered for me on MSDN:

Transforming TT files in MsBuild

Answer 2

For me, this was fixed by installing the "T4 Toolbox for Visual Studio 2015" extension. Apparently I only had the T4 editor installed.

Answer 3

Historically the story between T4 and MSBuild has been bad. Now with VS 2010 they are introducing Preprocessed templates. If you are using VS 2010 you should take a look at using those.