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date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:42:35 +0100,
group: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework
back
Re: Customising Setup Projects
On Aug 13, 3:42 pm, "Phil" <N/A> wrote:
> I posted this a few days ago in microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.setup but
> haven't had any response:
>
> VS2008 Windows Forms
> As part of the process of building my application setup program, I would
> like to make some modifications to certain files. I can easily write the
> code to do make the necessary changes given a list of filenames, but I'm
> unsure of the best way to integrate this into my setup project solution. I
> have had a quick look through the help files, and there seem to be several
> options (addins, macros, post-build events, etc...) but I'm not sure the
> best place to start. Any suggestions appreciated.
I'd do this as a part of build process, probably indeed as a post-
build event. So long as it integrates with MSBuild, it should be fine
- so that you can set up a dedicated build server without breaking
things. If your app will also report errors as errorlevel code, its
errors will be reported as build failures (which is what it should be,
if this step is necessary to get a working build).
date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:58:14 -0700 (PDT)
author: Pavel Minaev
Re: Customising Setup Projects
>
> > VS2008 Windows Forms
> > As part of the process of building my application setup program, I would
> > like to make some modifications to certain files. I can easily write the
> > code to do make the necessary changes given a list of filenames, but I'm
> > unsure of the best way to integrate this into my setup project solution.
> > I
> > have had a quick look through the help files, and there seem to be
> > several
> > options (addins, macros, post-build events, etc...) but I'm not sure the
> > best place to start. Any suggestions appreciated.
>
> I'd do this as a part of build process, probably indeed as a post-
> build event. So long as it integrates with MSBuild, it should be fine
> - so that you can set up a dedicated build server without breaking
> things. If your app will also report errors as errorlevel code, its
> errors will be reported as build failures (which is what it should be,
> if this step is necessary to get a working build).
OK. Thanks. I was looking at custom tools, but it all looks really
complicated.
I have managed to get something very simple working using a post build
event, so I shall continue down this route.
As a test I have used a simple dos command to rename some content files in
the project, and that seems to work. So what I need to do now I guess, is to
write a console app to take the filenames as parameters and make the
necessary changes to the files.
Thanks for the tip about reporting build errors. I'm not sure how to set the
errorlevel code, but I'll have a search for this.
Thanks
Phil.
date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:34:59 +0100
author: Phil N/A
Re: Customising Setup Projects
On Aug 13, 7:34 pm, "Phil" <N/A> wrote:
> > > VS2008 Windows Forms
> > > As part of the process of building my application setup program, I would
> > > like to make some modifications to certain files. I can easily write the
> > > code to do make the necessary changes given a list of filenames, but I'm
> > > unsure of the best way to integrate this into my setup project solution.
> > > I
> > > have had a quick look through the help files, and there seem to be
> > > several
> > > options (addins, macros, post-build events, etc...) but I'm not sure the
> > > best place to start. Any suggestions appreciated.
>
> > I'd do this as a part of build process, probably indeed as a post-
> > build event. So long as it integrates with MSBuild, it should be fine
> > - so that you can set up a dedicated build server without breaking
> > things. If your app will also report errors as errorlevel code, its
> > errors will be reported as build failures (which is what it should be,
> > if this step is necessary to get a working build).
>
> OK. Thanks. I was looking at custom tools, but it all looks really
> complicated.
> I have managed to get something very simple working using a post build
> event, so I shall continue down this route.
> As a test I have used a simple dos command to rename some content files in
> the project, and that seems to work. So what I need to do now I guess, is to
> write a console app to take the filenames as parameters and make the
> necessary changes to the files.
> Thanks for the tip about reporting build errors. I'm not sure how to set the
> errorlevel code, but I'll have a search for this.
If you declare your Main)( as returning int rather than void, then
whatever you return from it will be the error code.
Also, if you are going that route, then you might want to create a
custom MSBuild task rather than a console application. Here's some
info on that:
http://blogs.msdn.com/msbuild/archive/2006/01/21/515834.aspx
date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:29:03 -0700 (PDT)
author: Pavel Minaev
Re: Customising Setup Projects
Hi Phil,
Thank you for posting. And thanks for Pavel's answer. I totally agree with
him that post build event is suitable to your requirement. Other than that,
I have something to complement:
For how to customize your post build event, here is the instruction:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ke5z92ks.aspx
It also contains an example, I think you can follow it easily to build your
custom tool.
For troubleshooting the error in the post build event, please check the
guideline: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b0bktkzs.aspx
Although it is Visual C++ guideline, it has many common solutions to help
you to troubleshoot. For example:
" Add @echo on as the first command to see what your custom
build step is actually doing. The build events and build steps are placed
in a temporary .bat file and run when the project is built, so, you can add
error checking to your build event or build step commands.
" Run custom build steps and build events individually to
check their behavior.
One thing I want to mention that VS puts these commands in a batch file and
runs it. VS checks for build failures so it can tell you about them.
However - it only checks for a failure of the batch file that it created -
not for any failures within the batch file.
The solution for this limitation you can find it here:
http://geekswithblogs.net/dchestnutt/archive/2006/05/30/80113.aspx
Check for error after every meaningful step and add code at the end to
handle the error so VS will report it.
Hope it helps. Please let me know if you have any other concerns, or need
anything else.
Regards,
Hongye Sun (hongyes@online.microsoft.com, remove 'online.')
Microsoft Online Community Support
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date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:21:27 GMT
author: (Hongye Sun [MSFT])
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