My organization has a visual studio (2008) project that contains a slew of Crystal Reports. One thing we'd like to do is have the ability to automate the build of this assembly, especially when either
1) a new report is added to the project, or
2) whenever one of the existing reports is modified.
Everything as far as updating the project with new or modified reports is all fine-and-good, but we have yet to figure out a way to run the "Execute Custom Tool" against them (to regenerate the wrapper classes around the reports).
Do any of you fine gentlefolk know of a way to do this?
views:
191answers:
2
A:
Set up a build server for Continous Integration. Use either TeamCity from JetBrains or CruiseControl.NET if you're not drinking the MS TFS Kool-Aid.
Wim Hollebrandse
2010-02-03 15:53:03
I'm scouring their sites looking for any information about the custom tool execution, but am unable to find anything related. Could you give an overview of how these CI products would be able to accomplish said functionality? Thanks...
F3
2010-02-03 17:56:35
Well, as long as your Crystal Reports are part of the same Solution in VS.NET, these changes in your source repository would be picked by your build server and it would start building the solution. Is that not what you want?
Wim Hollebrandse
2010-02-03 19:56:23
The build is not the problem; the custom tool execution on the project items themselves (when they are added or modified) appears to be a "manual" process (IOW, right-click on the project item in the VS IDE and select "Execute Custom Tool"). *That* is the part I'm trying to see if I can get automated.
F3
2010-02-03 20:34:26
Right, I think that's not quite clear from your question. What custom tool do you run for these items?
Wim Hollebrandse
2010-02-03 20:45:35
It's the standard Crystal Reports custom tool: CrystalDecisions.VSDesigner.CodeGen.ReportCodeGeneratorWhenever a new report is added to the project (outside of the IDE), or an existing report in the project is updated (again, outside of the IDE), we need the automated build to have this custom tool triggered on those rpt's.Oh, and an edit to my previous: it's "Run Custom Tool," not "Execute Custom Tool" in the IDE...
F3
2010-02-03 20:49:46
Right, I would say if that generates code files on the fly, let the build server shell out to the reportcodegen tool and do this for each `.rpt` file. It is generated code after all, so should not be stored in the repository. That is what I would do.
Wim Hollebrandse
2010-02-03 22:53:31
A:
Has anyone figured this out yet?
I too am trying to build a Visual Studio .NET 2003 project which contains ".rpt" Crystal report files. These files are converted into C# ".cs" files by the VS "Run Custom Tool" menu.
I would like to automate this build on the command line using devenv or msbuild however, I get build errors because these .rpt files have not been converted to .cs files i.e., files are missing.
There must be a command line method for converting .rpt files to .cs files?
-reagan
Reagan Penner
2010-06-17 20:26:40