How can I get MSBuild to increment the ClickOnce publish revision version number on a build server?

Question

We have an NAnt script that checks out from CVS and then runs MSBuild to publish the application. The problem is we have to remember to always increment the version in Visual Studio.

We have the option to auto increment this on publish, but this gets wiped on the next checkout and I would rather not have to get the build script to check in the project file.

Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

Updating the MinimumRequiredVersion Automatically

Introduction to Project Editor

1. In Solution Explorer, right click on your project and select unload project.

   

2. Once the project has become unavailable, right click again and select edit <project_name>.<lang> proj.

   

Introduction to MSBuild

3. Properties use key/value pairs to extract information

   • Using the property name as an alias, you can use $(OutputPath) to obtain the value for the element <OutputPath>.\bin</OutputPath>

4. We’ll use the following properties generated for a ClickOnce deployment

   <MinimumRequiredVersion>1.0.0.6</MinimumRequiredVersion>
   <ApplicationRevision>7</ApplicationRevision>
   <ApplicationVersion>1.0.0.%2a</ApplicationVersion>
   

5. MSBuild Tasks can be specified in the project (*.proj) file and invoked during a build event.

   • FormatVersion is a built-in task for .NET 4.0 and later that formats the ApplicationVersion and ApplicationRevision into a single version number.

Implementation

6. Copy and Paste the following code into the opened project file as a child element to the root <Project> element.

   <Target Name="AutoSetMinimumRequiredVersion" BeforeTargets="GenerateDeploymentManifest">
     <FormatVersion Version="$(ApplicationVersion)" Revision="$(ApplicationRevision)">
       <Output PropertyName="MinimumRequiredVersion" TaskParameter="OutputVersion"  />
     </FormatVersion>
     <FormatVersion Version="$(ApplicationVersion)" Revision="$(ApplicationRevision)">
       <Output PropertyName="_DeploymentBuiltMinimumRequiredVersion" TaskParameter="OutputVersion"  />
     </FormatVersion>
   </Target>
   

   This code will take ApplicationVersion and ApplicationRevision as parameters in the Format Version task and will save the output by overwriting the MinimumRequiredVersion with the full publish version.

7. Save and reload your project. Every ClickOnce deployment will now automatically update to the most recently published version.

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Many thanks to Kev for their answer which I have basically rehashed here with a little bit of added clarification for any beginners. Here's a blog post I made about the issue that expands even more on my answer here.

Answer 2

In the end I did this using NAnt xmlpoke, so for the version we end up with 20.0.dayofyear.hourminute - it is mostly unique across builds.

There is no need for custom tasks - and the newer version of MSBuild has a pokexml too, so it might work with that.

<target name="pokerevision" depends="init">
    <property name="projectname" value="MyProject.GUI" />

    <!-- This is a bit flawed because 231 could mean 02:31 or 23:01, but we never build before 3 am. -->
    <property
        name="app.revision"
        value="${datetime::get-hour(datetime::now())}${datetime::get-minute(datetime::now())}" />

    <echo message="revision: ${app.revision}" />

    <xmlpoke
        file="${Solution.Path}\${projectname}\${projectname}.csproj"
        xpath="//x:Project/x:PropertyGroup[1]/x:ApplicationRevision"
        value="${app.revision}"
    >
        <namespaces>
            <namespace prefix="x" uri="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" />
        </namespaces>
    </xmlpoke>

    <property
        name="app.version"
        value="20.0.${datetime::get-day-of-year(datetime::now())}.${app.revision}" />

    <echo message="version: ${app.version}" />

    <xmlpoke
        file="${Solution.Path}\${projectname}\${projectname}.csproj"
        xpath="//x:Project/x:PropertyGroup[1]/x:ApplicationVersion"
        value="${app.version}"
    >
        <namespaces>
            <namespace prefix="x" uri="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" />
        </namespaces>
    </xmlpoke>
</target>