Monthly Archives: August 2010

What i dislike about the Web.config Transformation in VS2010

Posted by timvw on August 25, 2010 1 comments

There are a couple of things that i strongly dislike about the Web.config transformation in VS2010:

  • Only works with XML files (eg: Can’t be used to generate a release notes.txt file)
  • Does not seem to support externalized sections, eg: log4net.config in a separate file
  • No support to copy/paste transform files
  • Only works when Visual Studio 2010 is installed (And i am still not convinced a build server should have this).
  • Ties environment to build configuration

Lesson learned: Don’t trust your co-workers, always double-check!

  • Having multiple transformations is easy-peasy, just invoke the TransformXml task for all your config files and make sure your transformation files are correct. For log4net this would look like:
    • <log4net xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
 <root>
  <level value="ERROR" xdt:Transform="Replace"/>
 </root>
</log4net>
  • The support for copy/paste can be achieved by removing the DependentUpon tag in your proj file (At the cost that you don’t have the + sign in solution explorer which ‘hides’ the transforms files)

Making the TemplateFileTask easier to use…

Posted by timvw on August 25, 2010 None comments

One of the disadvantages of the TemplateFile task (msbuildtasks) is the fact that it requires a lot of typing to define template values:

<ItemGroup Condition= " '$(ConfigurationEnvironment)'=='build' ">
 <Tokens Include="a">
  <ReplacementValue>localhost</ReplacementValue>
 </Tokens>
 <Tokens Include="b">
  <ReplacementValue><mynode/></ReplacementValue>
 </Tokens>
</ItemGroup>

Here is a format proposition to make this a lot more finger friendly:

<configuration>
 <variables env="build">
  <x name="a">localhost</x>
  <x name="b><mynode/></x>
 </variables>
</configuration>

Here is the msbuild script we need to achieve that:

<PropertyGroup>
 <ConfigurationFile>configuration.xml</ConfigurationFile>
 <ConfigurationEnvironment>build</ConfigurationEnvironment>
</PropertyGroup>

<!-- Retreive all template values for the specific environment -->
<XmlQuery XmlFileName="$(ConfigurationFile)" XPath = "//variables[@env='$(ConfigurationEnvironment)']/*">
 <Output TaskParameter="Values" ItemName="Values" />
</XmlQuery>

<!-- Construct @Tokens -->
<ItemGroup>
 <Tokens Include="%(Values.name)">
  <ReplacementValue>%(Values._innerxml)</ReplacementValue>
 </Tokens>
</ItemGroup>

<!-- Generate the configuration files -->
<Message Text="Available variables:" />
<Message Text="====================" />
<Message Text="%(Tokens.Identity): %(Tokens.ReplacementValue)" />

Happy coding!

Clean TemplateFile hack

Posted by timvw on August 17, 2010 None comments

A while ago i wrote about a Clever TemplateFile hack to use some xml block as ReplacementValue. Today i realized there is a clean way to achieve this by defining the value as CDATA:

<TemplateTokens Include="mex">
 <ReplacementValue>
  <![CDATA[<endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />]]>
 </ReplacementValue>
</TemplateTokens>