Cancel Build if Task Runner Explorer Task Fails

Question

I am using visual studio task runner (2015) to run a Gulp task bound to before build.

I have set it up so that when the gulp tasks fails it sends exit code 1 and at the end it says "Process terminated with code 1." however the build continues.

This will cancel the build in team city so seems an issue linked Task Runner inside visual studio.

How can I prevent the build from taking place if it exits with a code other than 0?

Answer 1

You are correct in that this seems to be a Task Runner issue. The task runner does not communicate with MSBuild to stop a build if a BeforeBuild task fails.

To get around this, you can run your Gulp task via the project's pre-build event instead of via the Task Runner bindings.

Set the pre-build event

For class libraries, you can access Build Events by right-clicking your project and selecting Properties -> Compile -> Build Events....

For web projects, they are located at Properties -> Build Events.

Here is the command I used to call the Gulp task in pre-build event, which will prevent the MSBuild from running if it exits with a failure:

gulp -b $(ProjectDir) --gulpfile $(ProjectDir)gulpfile.js my-task

This command calls Gulp passing absolute paths for working directory and gulpfile.js.

Notes:

• I found all kinds of context and working directory issues trying to use a more straight up command like gulp my-task.
• $(ProjectDir) is one of the Macros for Build Commands.
• It is assumed that Gulp is installed globally: npm install -g gulp. See jonas.ninja's answer for how to build this install into the command (or for an alternative that does not require the global dependency).

Answer 2

I implemented davidmdem's solution above and it was great... on my system. I had gulp installed globally, but one of my coworkers did not, so the pre-build event would fail. Running gulp from Task Runner Explorer uses the project-level gulp installation, but running gulp from the pre-build script uses the global gulp installation.

To prevent the situation where a new developer doesn't have gulp installed, I expanded davidmdem's pre-build script to the following: (gulp --version || npm install -g [email protected]) & gulp -b $(ProjectDir) --gulpfile $(ProjectDir)gulpfile.js my-task

This command installs gulp (version 3.9.0 to match the project-level gulp installation) only if it is not already installed. Now gulp is not something that you have to think about before you can build the project!

---

(Update:)

An alternative (in my opinion: better) solution to this problem is to use npm as an intermediary. Continuing and modifying from the example above, I have a gulp task my-task that is being called from the command line. This removed the global gulp dependency and still properly stops msbuild if gulp fails.

Pre-build event:

npm run build

package.json:

"scripts": {
  "build": "gulp min"
}

Answer 3

I have build fail for jshint with gulp working (well enough for me, maybe sufficient for others.) I imagine it may be extended to include all the tasks in Task Runner.

Here is what I used/did...

As per this page, I added/edited this in my project.json, which hooks into the prebuild event...

  "scripts": {
    "prebuild": [ "gulp default" ]
  }

As per this page, I included the following for my jshint task...

// =============================
// jsHint - error detection
// =============================
gulp.task("jshint", function () {
    var jshGlobals = [
        '$',
        'jQuery',
        'window',
        'document',
        'Element',
        'Node',
        'console'
    ];

    gulp.src([paths.jsFiles, norefs])
        .pipe(jshint({
            predef: jshGlobals,
            undef: true,
            eqnull: true
        }))
        .pipe(jshint.reporter('jshint-stylish'))
        .pipe(jshint.reporter('fail'))
});

The latter two lines being the most significant. You will need to npm install jshint-stylish if you don't already have it.

Alternatively, for jshint-stylish, you can let VS handle it for you. Add the line for jshint-stylish as indicated below to your package.json...

{
  "name": "ASP.NET",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "devDependencies": {
    "es6-promise": "~3.1.2",
    "gulp": "^3.8.11",
    "del": "^2.2.0",
    "jshint": "~2.9.1",
    "jshint-stylish": "~2.1.0",
    "gulp-jshint": "~2.0.0",
    "gulp-flatten": "~0.2.0",
    "gulp-rename": "~1.2.2",
    "gulp-cssmin": "0.1.7",
    "gulp-uglify": "1.2.0",
    "gulp-postcss": "~6.1.0",
    "autoprefixer": "~6.3.3"
  }
}

Which gives me this when there is an error (in addition to the failed build) which is sufficient for me to dig further if/as necessary...

As opposed to the more detailed error info I get when running the same task via command line or Task Runner...

I imagine this solution can be improved but figured I would share as I hadn't seen a whole lot about it elsewhere.

Cheers.