Why won't Visual Studio 2005 generate an Xml Serialization assembly?

Question

Why isn't Visual Studio 2005 generating a serialization setting when I set the project setting "Generate Serialization Assembly" to "On"?

Answer 1

It turns out that Dev Studio only honors this setting for Web Services.

For non-web services you can get this to work by adding an AfterBuild target to your project file:

  <Target Name="AfterBuild" DependsOnTargets="AssignTargetPaths;Compile;ResolveKeySource" Inputs="$(MSBuildAllProjects);@(IntermediateAssembly)"  Outputs="$(OutputPath)$(_SGenDllName)">         
      <SGen BuildAssemblyName="$(TargetFileName)" BuildAssemblyPath="$(OutputPath)"  References="@(ReferencePath)" ShouldGenerateSerializer="true" UseProxyTypes="false" KeyContainer="$(KeyContainerName)" KeyFile="$(KeyOriginatorFile)" DelaySign="$(DelaySign)" ToolPath="$(SGenToolPath)">
          <Output TaskParameter="SerializationAssembly" ItemName="SerializationAssembly" />
      </SGen>
  </Target>

See also:

• SGen MSBuild Task
• AfterBuild Event

Answer 2

It can be done manually with sgen.exe.

Answer 3

Hey Adam, nice answer. Can you figure out a way to use the SGen MSBuild task and pass it the /f parameter to force the recreation of the serialization assembly after it is built? I would use the sgen.exe as a post-build event, but I can't find an environment variable for its path that is valid in the post-build event. Any ideas?