Run a Visual Studio custom tool at build time

Question

I have a script that will convert a text file into a resource file, so that I can have multiple language support by having text files for different languages converted into different resources. Once I run the script to get the resx file, I then have to run a custom build tool (as described here:Link to Code Project) in order to create the Designer.cs files to use the new files.

In keeping with the philosophy that I should be able to build the entire project with a single button click, how can I remove the step where I have to explicitly call the custom build tool in order to make the codebehind files?

I've tried automatically deleting the Designer.cs files as a pre-build step, since I would think that the custom build tool would automatically run if there were no Designer.cs files, but no dice.

So, I want my build script in Visual Studio/msbuild to do: 1) convert text to resx (done) 2) move resx files to appropriate directory (done) 3) create designer.cs files using a custom build tool (not done)

It's that last step...

Answer 1

Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy way of doing this. Custom Build Tools only run from within VS.NET - they don't run when you build your project using MSBuild from the command line.

In general, if you have the choice of writing a build tool as a Customer Build Tool or an MSBuild Task then choose the MSBuild Task every time as these Tasks will run in VS.NET and from the command line.

The designer.cs files for resources are there to support your coding. They give you the strongly typed access into the resource file. So, as long as you create your culture invariant resources in VS.NET (and let it create the .designer.cs files) then adding additional language support later (additional .resx files) should work fine.

If, however, your text files are your primary resource files, and you're adding new resource strings into these text files first, then you'll need to find another way of generating .cs files that allow you to code against those resources. If you HAD to, generating the .designer.cs file yourself (or somethign similar) wouldn't be that difficult. Using CodeDom or T4 you could create the helper class, using an existing .designer.cs file as a template.

Answer 2

There is a way to generate the *.Designer.cs for *.resx as part of the build process. There is a built-in MSBuild task GenerateResource, which basically a wrapper around the SDK tool resgen.exe. Here you can find an example how to use it.

Another thing you would find useful, if the generated *.Designer.cs version is not correct, basically, GenerateResource task is not calling the desired version of resgen.exe, setting property SdkToolsPath might help you.