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I've got a large solution that I'm using TFS (and MSBuild) to... well... build. However, it takes a long time to build everything, and I was wondering if it was possible to just debug the build XML file rather than doing the build itself.
I'm using VS2008 and TFS 2008.
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As the binary logger is build-into MSBuild, enabling it is as simple as using command-line option -binaryLogger , or -bl for short. As with other MSBuild command-line options, it works with the dotnet CLI. When a specific file is not provided, it defaults to dropping an msbuild. binlog in the current directory.
To install MSBuild on a system that doesn't have Visual Studio, go to Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019, or install the . NET SDK. If you have Visual Studio, then you already have MSBuild installed. With Visual Studio 2022, it's installed under the Visual Studio installation folder.
To run MSBuild at a command prompt, pass a project file to MSBuild.exe, together with the appropriate command-line options. Command-line options let you set properties, execute specific targets, and set other options that control the build process.
To build a specific target of a specific project in a solution. At the command line, type MSBuild.exe <SolutionName>. sln , where <SolutionName> corresponds to the file name of the solution that contains the target that you want to execute.
Unfortunately the possibility to debug MSBuild scripts with Visual Studio has been unofficially introduced in .NET 4.0.
For earlier versions all you are left with is "debugging by tracing", that is inserting log statements at key points in your script, running the script and examining the output.
Here's how you would typically do it using the Message Task:
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
<SomeVariable>foo</SomeVariable>
</PropertyGroup>
<Target Name="MyTarget">
<!-- Some tasks -->
<Message Text="The value of SomeVariable is: $(SomeVariable)" Importance="High" />
<!-- Some tasks -->
</Target>
</Project>
You can then invoke the script from the command line and redirect the output to a log file:
msbuild MyScript.proj /t:MyTarget > %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\MyScript.log
Related resources:
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