Sort Visual Studio build log in "Build Order" style

Question

There is a "Show output from" dropdown list in Visual Studio 2008 "Output" window, which allows viewing build events ordered by thread (Build Order). This is very useful when building big solutions on multi-core machines, as the log entries from those come unsynchronized.

Our organization has the automated build process, where solution(s) are compiled in a batch mode, using something like:

devenv Solution.sln /USEENV /build Release /out buildlog.txt

This will load Solution.sln, buld it in Release configuration and output build log into buildlog.txt.

Problem is: buildlog.txt is an output resembling "Build" output, not "Build Order", and therefore, it is pretty hard to read. Is there a command-line filter or something, which would convert output to "Build Order" format?

Answer 1

I don't know whether this will solve the formatting issue, but you could try using msbuild instead of devenv, with a command line such as:

msbuild Solution.sln /p:Configuration=Release /logger:XMLLogger,C:\Loggers\MyLogger.dll;OutputAsHTML

See the documentation for msbuild for information on the logging options. You may find that this will give you the ability to have a more sensible output.

Answer 2

Use simple filter, something like that:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var lines = new Dictionary<int, StringBuilder>();
    var line = Console.In.ReadLine();
    while (line != null)
    {
        int process = 0;
        var re = new Regex(@"^(?<process>\d+)\>.*$");
        if (re.IsMatch(line))
        {
            var match = re.Match(line);
            process = Convert.ToInt32(match.Groups["process"].Value);
        }

        if (!lines.ContainsKey(process))
        {
            lines[process] = new StringBuilder();
        }
        lines[process].AppendLine(line);

        line = Console.In.ReadLine();
    }

    foreach (var i in lines.Keys)
    {
        Console.Write(lines[i]);
    }
}

Answer 3

I don't think Walter's answer works for all the situation, because I've seen the problem when building C# projects and VS prints the Compile results withouth any process ID! such as

1>------ Build started: Project: MyProj, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------

Compile complete -- 1 errors, 0 warnings

Please note that I removed most of other outputs but imagine you're building a lot of projects and Compile complete line is not inserted right after the correct project, how would you find which project Compile complete belongs?