Prebuild event in Visual Studio replacing $(SolutionDir) with *Undefined*

Question

I believe the problem is documented here moved here and looks like it might be a bug in visual studio, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of a workaround.

Basically I have the following two lines (among other things) one right after the other in the prebuild event.

"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe" /p:configuration=Release;platform=x86 /t:rebuild "$(SolutionDir)Folder1\Project1.csproj"

"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe" /p:configuration=Release;platform=x86 /t:rebuild "$(SolutionDir)Folder2\Folder3\Project2.csproj" 

The first one succeeds and the other fails saying that The command ""C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe" /p:configuration=Release;platform=x86 /t:rebuild "*Undefined*Folder2\Folder3\Project2.csproj"" exited with code 1..

Edit:
Figured out the problem was that one of the other projects with the same line as it's prebuild failed, since MSBuild itself doesn't know about the macros.

Answer 1

I fixed this by replacing all $(SolutionDir) with $(ProjectDir)..\.

It was due to MSBuild running each project independently, and thus not the solution. It worked fine in VS2010, but not on the build server.

Answer 2

Wasted a lot of time to find perfect solution for this problem. Use Directory.Build.props.

In your sln location folder create a file with name Directory.Build.props and put this code inside:

<Project>
 <PropertyGroup>
    <SolutionDir>$(MSBuildThisFileDirectory)</SolutionDir>
 </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

This file will be automagically picked up by all your csproj files and will define (SolutionDir) property.