[antlr-interest] MSBUILD/Vs2008 > [OT 80/20]

[Ger Hobbelt]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 12:01 AM, Jim Idle <jimi at temporal-wave.com> wrote:
> VS is pretty good at just allowing you to exclude file from source code
> while making them part of the project, I do it all the time. Add to the
> project, select source control, select remove from source control. Then
> take a look at the project file to see how it annotates it - I would think
> that MSBUILD can do that without having to name the files in
> advance? Or no?



> Why does everyone think it is such a good idea to configure build tools
> with XML? It's a bloody stupid idea.

Hear! Hear!


(Well, this stuff is sold as being 'configuration' but what it really
is is rather more a kind of [meta]programming and XML ain't no
programming language. Bad architectural mistake, but by now almost
everyone is 'borged up and assimilated. Plus there's the CASE process
fantasy lurking in the background, where you draw your design,
double-click on the developer to generate code+conf for building, then
get up and fetch a coffee from the dispenser while R2D2 chugs away. To
many, using XML in that scenario for those conf files sounds like K-Y
jelly to prevent interface friction burns as it's simple machine
readable and one [config] parser rule them all. And what was ever
wrong with that, now. ;-) )



BTW: MSBuild can Include and Exclude files, but I've never got it to
do exactly what you asked. Not saying it's not doable, but checking
the docs didn't reveal the required incantation yet. Which leads me to
guess you're close to SOL now.


Meanwhile, you might go and hack around the issue like this fellow did
under different circumstances:

http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/2006/11/29/msbuild-dependencies-3of7/

the trick here would be to do like he did and make source control
ignore a specific directory, then modify the target output to write
all not-be-be-VSS-d files to that directory, so they won't be included
in the source control party, and take it from there, build-wise.


-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten / Best regards,

Ger Hobbelt

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