Using the MSBuild Sidekick
It must feel nice being able to download something, install it and then find out that the guys who wrote it have so much faith in your abilities that no instructions were attached on how to use it. Not even a “Use the Force” sound bite coming on every couple of minutes.
Well, it’s time we change all that. Not only for the sake of the less-psychic ones among you, but to provide you all with a solid introduction to the MSBuild Sidekick’s features and uses.
To begin, let’s have a look at the MSBuild Sidekick’s window:
The layout is pretty basic. On the left you’ve got the project-tree, giving you access to all the different sections in an MSBuild project. Each of these sections has its role in the configuration of the build process, based on the following definitions:
- Using Tasks – the list of references to non built-in tasks. These can be either user-defined tasks or additional tasks attached to the build engine by specific types of projects like a C# project.
- Property Groups – property groups are used to group property elements that contain values that are referenced several times in the project file or to set the values for properties that are used in several configurations.
- Item Groups – item groups define groups of item elements, which define inputs into the build system.
- Targets – the targets section holds target elements. Target elements are used to group tasks together in a particular order and expose sections of the project file as entry points into the build process.
- Imports – imports lists additional MSBuild files that are imported by the current project, allowing you to work in a more structured manner using multiple files.
Clicking on each of the sections in the project-tree will expose that section’s content in the right side of the window, which I like to call the property form. This is where you get to edit the different attributes of the elements you have in your project.
Next, let’s cover the basics of adding and removing elements. The key concept here is very simple – Right Click. When you right-click each of the sections, a little context-menu pops up allowing you to add a new element to a section – as you can see here with the Item Groups section:
Right-clicking an element within a section lets you remove it:
Once you add an element, you can then select it to edit its attributes in the property form or right-click it to add sub-elements to it, as is the case with Targets that lets you define tasks within a target.
All this functionality exists in the property form as well, meaning that if you right-click a row in the grid you’ll be able to either remove the selected element or add additional elements to that section.
Trying to keep these posts short and clear, that’s it for now. My next post will take you through some actual build-process definitions, going over the rest of the basic features in the MSBuild Sidekick, and the one after that will cover the advanced features and complete the introduction to using the MSBuild Sidekick.
Enjoy using the MSBuild Sidekick and as always – if you’d like to report a bug or suggest a feature, do not hesitate to contact us.