Get Visual Studio to run a T4 Template on every build

Question

I agree with GarethJ - in VS2010 it is much easier to regenerate tt templates on each build. Oleg Sych's blog describes how to do it. In short:

1. Install Visual Studio SDK
2. Install Visual Studio 2010 Modeling and Visualization SDK
3. Open in text editor project file and add to the end of file but before </Project>

That's it. Open your project. On each build all *.tt templates will be reprocessed

<!-- This line could already present in file. If it is so just skip it  -->
<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<!-- process *.tt templates on each build  -->
<PropertyGroup>
    <TransformOnBuild>true</TransformOnBuild>
</PropertyGroup>
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\TextTemplating\v10.0\Microsoft.TextTemplating.targets" />

I used JoelFan's answer to come up w/ this. I like it better because you don't have to remember to modify the pre-build event every time you add a new .tt file to the project.

• add TextTransform.exe to your %PATH%
• created a batch file named transform_all.bat (see below)
• create a pre-build event "transform_all ..\.."

transform_all.bat

@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

:: set the working dir (default to current dir)
set wdir=%cd%
if not (%1)==() set wdir=%1

:: set the file extension (default to vb)
set extension=vb
if not (%2)==() set extension=%2

echo executing transform_all from %wdir%
:: create a list of all the T4 templates in the working dir
dir %wdir%\*.tt /b /s > t4list.txt

echo the following T4 templates will be transformed:
type t4list.txt

:: transform all the templates
for /f %%d in (t4list.txt) do (
set file_name=%%d
set file_name=!file_name:~0,-3!.%extension%
echo:  \--^> !file_name!    
TextTransform.exe -out !file_name! %%d
)

echo transformation complete

There is a great NuGet package that does just this:

PM> Install-Package Clarius.TransformOnBuild

Details about the package can be found here and the GitHub repo is here.

I used MarkGr's answer and developed this solution. First, create a batch file called RunTemplate.bat in a separate tools folder above the main solution folder. The batch file just has the line:

"%CommonProgramFiles%\Microsoft Shared\TextTemplating\1.2\texttransform.exe" -out %1.cs -P %2 -P "%ProgramFiles%\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5" %1.tt

This batch file takes 2 parameters... %1 is the path to the .tt file without the .tt extension. %2 is the path to any DLLs referred to by Assembly directives in the template.

Next, go into the Project Properties of the project containing the T4 template. Go into Build Events and add the following Pre-build event command line:

$(SolutionDir)..\..\tools\RunTemplate.bat $(ProjectDir)MyTemplate $(OutDir)

replacing MyTemplate with filename of your .tt file (i.e. MyTemplate.tt) without the .tt extension. This will have the result of expanding the template to produce MyTemplate.cs before building the project. Then the actual build will compile MyTemplate.cs

Recently found this great VS plugin, Chirpy.

Not only does it generate your T4 on a build, but it allows T4-based approach to minification of javascript, CSS, and even lets you use LESS syntax for your CSS!

Probably the simplest way is to install a Visual Studio extension called AutoT4.

It runs all T4 templates on build automagically.